Monday, February 08, 2010
kikin: curating a superior experience
At the 2010 DLD Conference, Mitchell Baker, Leader of the Mozilla
Project and this year’s Aenne-Burda-Prize Winner, made a strong case
for the integration of personal data with interests and customization in the browsing experience. “Browsers are likely to be something like
a concierge, a personal secretary, a virtual self,” Baker said.
kikin shares Baker's vision. We are using your preferences to curate a
superior "My Web Always With Me" experience for our users.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
kikin Helps you Shop Online!
The user-centric experience is all about bringing you relevant content from your favorite sites -- and also providing those great "wow" moments along the way. Using kikin while you are shopping online will not only give you more options on products and reviews, but also provide for a fun way to get your friends involved.
Not sure if a certain digital camera is right for you? Check what your buddies are saying about that model on Facebook! Compare prices from Amazon, eBay, Shopping.com and more, and hey, you might even be able to find a coupon code on Twitter! While you are picking out your purchase, kikin also provides you with product review videos, real-time news, and related articles from your favorite blogs.
If you’re like us, and the most important opinions come from the sources you know and the friends you trust, kikin can save you time and money, just like your favorite shopping buddy who knows all the best retail tricks.
“My Web Always With Me”.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers
Research firm Outsell has published its News Users 2009 Report, which is based on a survey about the online and offline news preferences of 2,787 U.S. news consumers.
Analyzing the usage patterns on how users consume news content, the report concludes that fewer and fewer users are actually going to destination sites of publishers and, instead, are consuming content on so-called aggregator sites (e.g. Google News, etc.).
The report states “Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it’s also taking a significant share away. A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites.”
The report states that users are more likely to turn to an aggregator (31 percent) than a newspaper site (8 percent) or other site (18 percent).
However, the problem with aggregators such as Google News is that the publishers, though providing their content to aggregators, are not participating in the revenues generated.
We at kikin believe that it is crucial to bring the content to the user rather than thinking the user would come to the destination site - which this study shows users do less and less often. We call this the ‘user-centric web’ – let relevant content come to me rather than force me into silo’ed web experiences.
BUT: Publishers should be in control of how their content is displayed when it is served ‘offshore’ (i.e. outside of the publisher's site) and publishers should be in control of how they monetize their content in such cases.
kikin is offering exactly that to publishers.
Monday, February 01, 2010
User-Centric Experiences Panel at DLD: Video
At the DLD Conference on January 25th, our CEO Carlos Bhola spoke on the panel about User-Centricity. We appreciated the warm welcome and insightful questions from the audience about our mission to provide "My Web Always With Me."
Carlos was joined by David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect;" Nick Bilton, UI Specialist of The New York Times; Tom Glocer, CEO Thomson Reuters; David Moore, Chairman & Founder of 24/7 Real Media; and Tero Ojanpera, EVP, Services at Nokia.
You can watch the video of the panel here: http://video.dld-conference.com/watch/68vnozI
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Introducing kikin Everywhere!
We’re excited to launch the newest enhanced version, of kikin. Now, when you visit many popular sites, you’ll see kikin at the top of the page, ready to enhance your user experience.
Seeing the Big Picture
With kikin you have a lot more personalized and relevant information available at your fingertips. If you’re interested in the new Sherlock Holmes movie and you’re reading the review on IMDB.com, you can hover over kikin to watch previews, see what people are saying on Twitter, read relevant posts from your favorite blogs, and hear what your friends on Facebook have to say about the movie – all without leaving IMDB.com!
Share What’s Good
Our favorite feature is sharing, especially with Twitter. Sharing a page or video with kikin is actually faster than copying and pasting a link into TweetDeck. Just click the share button, add some text for your tweet, and click share again. That’s it!
We’d love to hear what you think of kikin in search and across the web. Please post your comments below.
Friday, January 22, 2010
We’re Cooking Up Something Special For DLD
This Monday, January 25, kikin CEO Carlos Bhola will be presenting kikin at DLD - Digital, Life, Design - Conference in Munich.
The DLD Conference is a three day event showcasing the creative endeavors of artists, web designers, bloggers, media entrepreneurs, scientists, gadget-makers, and investors as a way of forming networks, business relationships, and creating buzz about new products and ideas.
This is the perfect place for us to bring kikin to the world's attention.
Carlos will be joining a panel entitled, "User-Centric Experiences", where he will discuss our vision of future consumer web experiences. The industry experts joining him on this panel include David Kirckpatrick, 'The Facebook Effect', Nick Bilton, UI Specialist of The New York Times, Tom Glocer, CEO Thomson-Reuters, David Moore, Chairman & Founder of 24/7 Real Media and Tero Ojanpera, EVP Services of Nokia. This will be an exciting panel as all user relevant disciplines - design, publishing, value added services, advertising and mobile platforms - will be represented for a discussion on how digital content and service consumption will become increasingly user centric and personal. We call this "My Web Always With Me".
Follow the panel discussion on Monday 12:00 pm EST / 6:00 pm CET live at http://www.dld-conference.com/video.php
In contrast to today's one-size-fits all Internet, kikin will allow you to automatically pull the relevant content you like from all your favorite websites, cutting out the clutter in between. The DLD Conference will be the jump-off for a series of kikin releases that will empower you and me to bring "My Web Always With Me".
Try kikin yourself and be a pioneer of the User Centric Web!
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Say Hello to Hulu
Keep tabs on your favorite Hulu shows. With kikin, you can easily see which episodes and clips are available, and you can watch them all right from your search results page.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
[How To] Use kikin to Plan a Family Dinner
kikin is your secret ingredient to find foods and recipes that your family will love. Start by entering a term like “easy entrees” into your favorite search engine. Inside the kikin player on your search results page you might see a tab from Amazon.com offering you a great price on cookbooks for busy moms and dads:
Or your neighbor and Facebook friend down the street may be raving about that simple casserole they put together with just a few ingredients they had in their freezer. If it’s in their Facebook status and it’s relevant, kikin will display it to you in the kikin player.
You can skip the massive, impersonal recipe sites and get recommendations straight from sources you trust.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
It’s nice to Yelp you
Meet our newest BFF, Yelp!
Quickly see pics, reviews and a map, for your favorite locations in your favorite search engines.
A note to the locals: When in SoHo, be sure to drop-by Bar 89 and check out the restrooms.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Watch the kikin Demo
Check out this cool kikin demo from Molly at DemoGirl.com.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wikipedia, meet kikin
We just added Wikipedia to the kikin Player. It's super easy to preview content from Wikipedia.com as you’re searching the web. You might even learn something new!
When you’ve found something that sparks your interest, expand the kikin Player to see the full article without leaving the page.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
kikin Launches iTunes
We released our iTunes experience in kikin for a portion of our users today. (We’ll be rolling this out to everyone soon.)
Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll see:
Music – find songs and albums
Podcasts – discover new and exciting podcasts
Movies – watch trailers from your favorite movies
With one simple click, iTunes will open and you can easily purchase/download any content you wish!
Friday, October 23, 2009
kikin on TechCrunch.com
kikin Personalizes Search By Tapping Into Your Social Graph
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
We are Live!
We're happy to announce we released kikin as a public beta this week! We're excited to open our service to everyone and encourage you to download and try kikin today. Since this is a beta, we ask you to send us your feedback (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) and bear with us as we make our final tweaks.
Try kikin Today!
To get started, just click on the download button in the upper right-hand corner.
Customize kikin
Get the most out of kikin by customizing your settings and connecting to Facebook and Twitter. (This is how you see your friends' status updates and tweets!) With the kikin Player installed, visit kikin.com and click settings in the blue bar or click on the kikin logo in the player (on search pages) and click on settings.
We'd love to hear your thoughts, so let us know!
