| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Social Media |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, UK |
| Key people | Mitch Lazar (CEO) |
| Products | Mobile Social News Aggregator |
| Employees | 40-45 (2009) |
Taptu is a social media and technology company that builds platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices, and most significantly on touch screen mobile devices, including the iPhone and Android phones. Taptu is a privately held company that was founded in Cambridge in 2007 and is backed by funding from Venture Capitalists including DFJ Esprit and Sofinnova. The company is based in Cambridge and Denver, Colorado.
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Taptu currently has two products. Its flagship product is the recently launched My Taptu, a social news aggregator that draws heavily on the company’s mobile search heritage but attempts to move them beyond search.[1] According to Taptu, the app, which is available on the iPhone and Android devices, is "aimed at solving information overload," or what Taptu calls "app hopping."[2] It presents all the information that a person "is into" in a "one- stop app" through "streams," or what CNET describes as “content playlists.”[3] My Taptu has tried to separate itself in the increasingly crowded social news space by offering various ways of personalizing and building My Taptu.
Currently, the app lets users add content through:
1) Social Streams: Users can add their Twitter, Facebook, or Linked In feeds to My Taptu. They can also add the feeds of select newsmakers or publishers that My Taptu have curated. Any time someone in a user's social circle shares a link with them, My Taptu will display a preview of the article and its source in the app itself.
2) Single Streams: The single stream of content comes from one source, and runs all of the news or content coming only from that source. For example, a person can add “The New York Times” breaking news as a stream.
3) Mixed Streams: Mixed streams are curated by topic. Content comes from a variety of sources. For example, the technology news stream could contain news flowing from TechCrunch, the New York Times Bits Blog, Read Write Web, Engadget, Gizmodo, Wall Street Journal among others. Taptu believes mixed streams put a story into a wider context, and help people discover content they might have not originally sought out.
4) Web Watcher Streams: Taptu has technology that it calls the “web watcher.” This allows it to watch web sites that have no RSS feed and no mobile presence and turn their content into streams. The company uses it to fill out their fashion streams.
My Taptu was released in the App Store and the Android Market on November 9th, 2010. It has received several positive reviews.[4][5][6] and Apple promoted the App on its UK App Store front page by selecting it as a feature App of the Week shortly after My Taptu launched.
To support the launch of My Taptu, the company commissioned a series of online videos. The videos are designed to illustrate that My Taptu had a wide enough depth and breadth of content to appeal to any niche interest or passion a person has. One of its successful videos depicts the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, riding a “Boris Bike” Danny MacAskill-style at a local London skate park.[7]
Taptu’s other product is Wapedia, a mobile Wikipedia service.
Taptu first product was a mobile search engine, provided as a web site using html optimised for phones, and dedicated "apps" for iPhone and Android. It was closed in early 2011, with an announcement from Mitch Lazar stating the intention to focus on the news aggregation product.
Mitch Lazar, former MD of Yahoo Mobile Europe, is CEO of Taptu. He stepped into the role on 20 October 2010, after spending 3 months as President and COO. Steve Ives, founder and former CEO, moved over to president where he remained until early 2011[8][9]
Taptu is backed by Sofinnova and DFJ Esprit, which bought out 3i’s investments in 2009.