The New Rummble: Explained

Earlier today we reported on how London-based location recommendation startup Rummble was in the midst of a shakeup that will see it moving away from a consumer focus to one that provides a service for other businesses. Now we’ve got a bit more detail about exactly how this will work.

In case you ‘re unfamiliar with it, Rummble currently offers a product similar to services like Yelp and Qype, letting users rate and review locations. However, the score Rummble displays for each venue varies for each user, depending on the ratings those users’ friends have given. Relevant locations are then recommended based on a user’s social graph, creating a ‘Trust graph’.

Rummble’s new direction is to take that technology and use it to provide a platform that allows trust-based recommendations to be applied to a wide range of user-generated content across markets such as media and the social Web.

Third party services will be able to hook into the platform, in order to help provide information via what amounts to a trust-based social recommendation engine.

Rummble is already starting to work with a number of partners in order to use the API, although it’s not disclosing who they are just yet. The company is also working on speeding up the algorithm and preparing it to scale for the demands of high-traffic third parties.

Rummble’s key strength has always been its unique approach to recommendation, and the new direction for it takes it out of a crowded consumer location market into an area which gives it a lot more flexibility. We’ll certainly be keeping a keen eye on the company over the next few months to see how it goes.