I'd like to thank Phillip Hofmeyr, co-founder of Snagsta, who introduced Snagsta to me.
Snagsta is a list-sharing and social recommendation website that helps you find things you’ll like but haven't already heard of.
It allows you to upload, and safely store, your favourite lists – from the top ten sushi restaurants in West London to the best beach resorts in Asia – anything that comes to mind. But Snagsta becomes much more useful if you set up a network of friends. By using your network as a ‘relevance’-filter, it helps you find things that interest you in the lists of people you trust – your friends. Snagsta will also make recommendations to you. By comparing your tastes and lists to other members Snagsta recommendation engine will identify like-minded people and send you suggestions from their lists.
“[Search Engines] can only help you find something if you already have an idea of what it is …” The Economist
The problem with the web today is that although search engines such as Google have become extremely proficient in helping us access data, they do not yet allow us to evaluate the results. Differing reviews about a product can often cancel one another out. Two people’s idea of a ‘good hotel’ may differ substantially but Yahoo would return the same listing to both.
“The more opinions you have, the less you see.” Wim Wenders
And the sheer volume of information and opinion that exists online can lead to analysis paralysis.
Snagsta's solution will not only take the pain out of online research by leveraging personal preferences to help users easily make choices, but it will also help them find new things they might like but haven’t already heard of.
In essence, Snagsta helps you find the things Google can’t.
Snagsta team is based in London. They are developing the front-end in Bangkok and the back-end in Hong Kong.
Their Private Beta is planned for end of January.
