The my6sense team of elves is delighted to announce that tech celeb and prestigious blogger Louis Gray is joining as VP marketing. The company is excited about taking Digital Intuition to the next level and is confident in Mr. Gray's ability to fuel our rockets and project us further into the new age of the 6th sense. Louis, we're proud to have you with us. Congrats and welcome aboard!

Why My6sense: Right Time, Right Place, Right Context

After a post talking about the "Me Me Me" portion of social media, it seems only right to follow up and talk about news with me. If you caught Marshall Kirkpatrick's story on ReadWriteWeb (See: My6Sense & The Geek Who Rode His Blog to the Edge of the World) or caught the CinchCast interview I did with Robert Scoble, you know that I have joined digital intuition pioneer my6sense as the company's vice president of Marketing, after working with the company for a year as an advisor as part of my work with Paladin Advisors Group. By joining my6sense, I am the company's first employee in the United States, as the bulk of the company is at their Israeli headquarters, and I get the opportunity, once again, to take a major participatory role in a tech startup which has the very real potential to change the way we consume information, of all kinds, in all places.

As you may know from my previous coverage of my6sense, the company has an iPhone application today that prioritizes content from your subscriptions and social streams, based on your own behavior, automatically. Even more importantly, the company has an "Attention API", which can plug into any content provider, stream client or social network, breaking us out of the box of editorially-divined content prioritization, or best guess social circle recommendations, or the most-common, simple chronological sorting.

Truth is, even for the most focused of us information consumers, we are missing interesting content. More people are sharing more information more easily in more places, and it is impossible to read every Tweet, every Facebook share, every RSS entry or every Google Buzz post. Our intuition tells us quickly what are the most important items, and we find ourselves skipping the rest, or getting annoyed at what we find less valuable, considered "noise". I fear it is only going to get worse.

Solving for this information overload dilemma has seen new companies debut interesting filters, or rely on popularity or community to push items that may interest you to the top, but this is not true human ranking function, or it expects you to explicitly list your interests by keyword or subject. From all the companies I've talked to, interviewed, tested, and written about, my6sense has the best underlying technology, which works implicitly, leveraging your own behavior and not only already works very well, giving me a great mobile feed reading experience, but also sets up the opportunity to make this the official prioritization and personalization engine for the Web.

Even if we wholly adopt the belief that there is value in real-time reactions and recency, there is much to be said for the right content to find its way to you at the right time, in the right context. Factors that make you decide whether to read one article or update over another can be dependent on many different things - the source, the author, the headline, the subject, or even the time of day or location, and my6sense's Phds are working on divining the best stuff just for you - not anybody else. And in the year-plus that I have used the iPhone app, I practically never use its alternate time-based view, as the content is unfiltered and usually off-topic.

What makes me excited enough about my6sense to put Paladin on the backburner, despite the firm's doing very well, and having just hired a new partner, is that this is the right time to start plugging in prioritization and personalization for the entire Web. If the entire story were "just" an iPhone application, it wouldn't be interesting. But consider the benefits of personally curated content sites from major media outlets, social networks and clients. Consider how valuable it would be for those sites if users found content more relevant and stayed just percentage points longer per site, read more stories, and clicked on more relevant ads. Consider the real value of not contributing to the world of information overload, but cutting through the noise like a warm knife through butter, find the best and ignoring the rest.

My6sense already has the best technology, from all I have seen and heard, to make this happen. Now comes the opportunity to help do my part, an active role, to transform the company from technology leader to market leader.

And if you are curious what this means for the future of louisgray.com, I will of course be changing my About page and will offer disclosure if there is ever a time that warrants it, just as I always have. I have tried to bring solid content and ideas and smart technology here since 2006, when I worked for a hardware company, and in the last year, as a new media Partner at Paladin. The perspective changes, but the goals remain the same. Please do continue to keep me honest, and always let me know if you think I have crossed the line.

If you haven't yet had a chance to catch the call I did with Robert Scoble from Monday night, it is embedded below.

mMany thanks @jakemaslow for an incredible review!

my6sense: The Virtual Assistant

Imagine a robot intuitively knowing what you need, or having a tool that suggests options you might be interested in. Pretty sci-fi, right? Well, not really. my6sense is a predictive application that has brought the future to today.

With the overwhelming volume of information streaming from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feeds directly to your iPhone and iPad, it’s impossible to keep up with it all. And, sorting through it to find relevant and the most updated content for your needs is like ‘finding a needle in a haystack.’ It’s enough to make the most energetic and savvy SEO professional feel like he’s trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

Now, thanks to my6sense, you have your own personal virtual assistant.

In an article by Steve Mollman, for CNN (edition.cnn.com):

“It [My6Sense] uses algorithms to learn about you from the way you behave as you go through your streams. It observes, for instance, which links you click, how long you look at something, and whether you share the content with others. There are thousands of such variables it pays attention to. Along the way, it gets to know you.”

Roi Carthy, in an article on TechCrunch.com explains My6Sense:

“The company has been building out what it calls ‘digital intuition,’ a content ranking technology that to date has been applied to RSS feeds to separate the signal from the noise [. . .] The real beauty is that it requires zero intervention other than using the app itself.”

As a user of my6sense on my iPad and iPhone, I can attest to its abilities. Within a couple of days of using it, it is able to hone in on your online preferences and needs.

The Basics of my6sense:

1. It allows you to easily subscribe to any blog. Just enter the web address and it finds the RSS feed – this in itself is a time-saving capability. And, it accepts dozens of feeds easily.

2. It has pre-selected options for sources such as the NY Times, iPhone blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of others.

3. It’s a great tool for keeping up with your particular industry’s information, along with specific information you may need for SEO strategies. Along wit this, it will help with your personal interests and hobbies.

The Predictive Features of my6sense:

1. It learns your online preferences within a couple of days, and begins to filter your streams and find ones of interest (recently added feature).

2. The more you use it, the more it learns—it actually seems to get smarter. What this means for the user is that after a very short time, the app will automatically make suggestions; it will predict what information you would find interesting.

It automatically added a post to the top of my feed from a Google blog. When I clicked on it, a message on top stated I might be interested in adding this blog to my stream.

3. It is versatile; as your usage changes, it quickly adapts.

4. It also offers content that you may miss due to misleading titles. If it picks up something within the content of a post or article that is pertinent to your needs, it will bring it to your attention.

What’s to Come?

Predictive technology is an exciting and innovative tool. Surely its capabilities will be broadened and applied to business marketing tactics to help find potential customers—every time someone does a search, most often it is with the intent to buy. But for the present, my6sense is a much needed personal virtual assistant that may not be perfect, but is a wonder at helping to sort through the barrage of information available online.

Thank you to @WilliamBuist for a great post! "The new iPhone App launched today is exceptional at doing something I've struggled for a long time to do, providing focus in an online world on the things that I talk about with friends and those I care about. At giving me a clarity of vision and a set of noise reducing headphones. Here's my summary of what it does to get information to you - it is of course a simplification - once with you sharing it back out is just a keypress and you can have it everywhere in seconds.: So much of what we now consume is done through streams of information that we dip into and out of as time permits, there is value in the flowing information in Twitter but we can only throw our bucket into the stream and see what water we have caught now and again, how much do we miss? Our newsfeeds on Facebook and Linked-in pass us by more than they feed our minds. The comments on youTube that reference your interests may never be seen That was then. A web of streams is here, we need tools and support to make it make sense - now we have them. Personally, I think the Ecademy App and My6Sense's digital intuition toolset is a reason to go an get an iphone on it's own." Read more here: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=152388