Gadget Discovery and Flash Sale Site Curisma Launches Today

Publié le 04 octobre 2011 , A propos de... Ivory king

The MIT-based startup brings the recommendation engine and featured sale to new and interesting gadgets. Members are referring to Curisma as the Pandora or Woot of gadgets, but really its both.

While there are many social sites involving shopping and suggestions, Curisma gives its members new and interesting gadgets. Site visitors can sign up through Facebook or its own registration, then pick out items that they want or have. A bookmarklet lets members add a new item to the Curisma site from wherever they discover it. After having populated their account in this way, folks get recommendations based on their selections, and points for every item selected or added. Curisma wants people to add items that are innovative, functional, or unique. These are searchable by category, price or popularity, giving people more to discover or receive recommendations about.

Curisma features an item every day that is available for a deal - so in addition to the discovery site, there is also a flash sale functionality. For today, as an example, its site launch deal is something called the "Tocky." This alarm clock has a motor to jump off its resting place, roll around, and also plays a custom wake-up tone. The touch sensitive device normally retails for $69, but for roughly forty more hours, can be purchase from Curisma for $42. Purchases also give members points, which bump up their profile on the "Curisma-meter," and the meter claims that these points will be usable at some point, but for now only are crunched by a special MIT algorithm that populates the leaderboards.

Followers are calling the service a Pandora or Woot for gadgets, each of which addresses one half of the site's usage. Both of these functions were built by Fatma Yalcin and Eugene Gorelik, the founders and CEO and CTO, respectively. Based in Cambridge, the startup came out of Yalcin's enthusiasm for
"products at the cross-section of technology and design" and Gorelik's passion for discovering new technology.

http://www.atelier.net/fr/node/397174