A new web service has sprung up in Japan that describes itself not as a search engine but a “recommend engine”. A new Japanese startup, Media Jump, is behind the service that was launched last week called “Kita Kore” meaning “just what I wanted” in Japanese slang. The site can be described as a social media events hub that recommends different events to registered members based on preferences. What is interesting is that the more users use the site the more it learns about them and the better the recommendations can be.
After entering simple information on your preferences upon registering, the site then learns from the history of which events you either attend or “Kita Kore”, similar to the Facebook like button. It can then begin to recommend different events automatically to you that may appeal based on the preferences and the users history. Once registered you can also link it up to various different social media accounts including the main players; Twitter, Facebook and Mixi. Users then have the option of instantly sharing the events they have been recommended or stumbled upon to their network. This works both as a nice piece of marketing for the site but also possibly gaining interest in various events that some wouldn’t normally have an interest in.
Currently events are updated daily and listed throughout Japan with users being able search by region. A nice touch is that the site is also linked automatically to your Google Calendar and there is a stand alone calendar customizable on the site also. The site also features a nice explanatory video, telling the story of a bored office girl and the “Kita Kore” grandfather character who ends ups becoming her personalized events planner.
The team behind Media Junk actually originally started out at the Japanese advertising giant Hakuhodo, so it is no surprise that the site is also fairly full of different targeted ads. Users also get recommended events that may not necessarily fit with their preferences but are “featured” by the site. As long as they don’t become to obtrusive it actually could work as an interesting business model, especially being able to target more personalized ads s it learns more about its users. The idea of a social networking events site, such as this, is pretty cool and it will be interesting to see how well it gets adopted and just how well it can match up events to fit the users profiles as time passes. One thing that does let it down slightly at present is the lack of a mobile version of the website, but this will no doubt come in time.
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