The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.Name: CircleMe
Quick Pitch: CircleMe is a new social platform to track, engage with and share all your true likes in one place.
Genius Idea: Helping web users get more out of their digital lives.
Who are you? It’s a metaphysical question with an ever-changing answer. But in the age of Facebook “Likes,” Foursquare checkins and continual social updates, perhaps the answer can be found in what we share.
CircleMe, a newly launched social site from UK-based startup Cascaad, is the inverse of the typical social network. Instead of focusing on connecting you with friends and family members, CircleMe connects you to you — for a deep dive into your sense of self, as defined by the various kinds of digital things you like.
“We wanted to provide a place for people to able to engage more than themselves,” Cascaad founder Erik Lumer says. “The idea is to provide a way to collect, in one place, all the things that you really like — whether that’s music, movies, famous people or things that you’re fond of.”
The CircleMe user can pull in a selection of favorite people, places, movies and things from their Facebook “likes,” Foursquare checkins and Netflix streaming activity. The end result, with a little tweaking, is you — or a digital rendering of your likes in a classy, customizable profile that can be shared with others.
CircleMe, explains Lumer, has three key functions: To help you collect your likes across a broad range of categories in one place, to give you a way to express your likes in a visually stimulating and emotional way, and to allow you to engage and cultivate interests through the discovery of new information.
And why might this be important? For the same reason that Facebook created Timeline — because much of what we share on the web is ephemeral.
“You’re collecting likes just as a byproduct of sharing with other people,” says Lumer, “but you’re not creating them with the idea that you’re collecting the most important things in your life.”
“The only value of having those likes is for advertisers,” he adds. “We really wanted to provide a way for users to get more out of their likes.”
For a still-maturing private beta product, CircleMe delivers on its promise rather well, and its first few thousand users, says Lumer, have responded positively to the product.
CircleMe launched into private beta last week.
Source: Mashable
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