Blog aggregator Notey raises $1.6M from Xiaomi VP, Infoseek founder, Hootsuite CEO

Blogosphere and blogging are words that are out of fashion these days as aspiring media mavens are busy replicating Buzzfeed. Which was why I felt some deja vu when I received news that Hong Kong and San Francisco startup Notey has raised US$1.6 million in seed funding to “create a window to the blogosphere.”

It’s a substantial round in Asia (and outside of China) considering that its product – essentially a website that aggregates blog posts of various topics – has just launched. It has some well known backers too, including Xiaomi’s vice president of International Hugo Barra, Hootsuite founder and CEO Ryan Holmes, and Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch. Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex is also an investor. Notey founders Catherine Tan and Kevin Lepsoe are ex-investment bankers.

The idea for Notey came about when the husband-and-wife team searched for blogs to find out their next travel destination. They found that there wasn’t an easy and seamless way to search for high-quality blog posts. They believed millions of others faced the same situation: seeking out first-hand experiences and opinions outside of the usual publications is difficult.

It’s an incredibly competitive landscape for Notey though, especially since it isn’t positioning itself as a publication but a curation tool. An analogous service is Flipboard, which also starts off by getting users to select several topics to follow. Yes, Notey is different in that it trawls content from 500,000 blogs, but the outcome doesn’t seem too different at first glance. Flipboard works with my Facebook and Twitter feeds to customize the content I want to see, and that works just fine for me. Sure, Notey has a pretty sweet user experience and a beautiful interface, but is there enough demand for another aggregator?

“What differentiates us from RSS readers and blog directories is that we’re focused on the content. We’ve structured the site based on topics, rather than creating a list of bloggers. On top of that, we also curate. A friend described Notey as ‘80 percent tech; 20 percent Vogue’ and we entirely agree,” says Tan. “We think having that human touch makes all the difference.”

Let’s hope that’s really the case. Notey’s arguably strongest feature is its search tool. I was able to zoom in on personalities like SpaceX founder Elon Musk or NBA superstar Kobe Bryant very quickly, and the site brought me a list of relevant articles about them. RSS reader Feedly does have search capability, but it needs more work.

Tan tells Tech in Asia that Notey, available on the web and as an iOS app, is doing a better job than existing tools in helping users find content. While Flipboard’s search engine is pretty useful, Tan says that it focuses on the top publications while Notey zooms in on the long tail. “You’ll typically find Flipboard’s sources on say page one of Google. Notey however highlights more of the independents and the best of those sources featured on page two to ten of Google.” She also claims that Notey covers more topics, 500,000 compared to Flipboard’s 34,000.

On Facebook, Tan says that it tends to serve up clickbait to users – and I have to agree. While the social network proclaimed that it’s trying to cut down on such content, the fact remains that people tend to have a low bar for credibility and would share stuff that don’t stand up to scrutiny. That’s a source of irritation for me. Notey, on the other hand, employs human curation to ensure quality. We’ll see if it can deliver.

In the startup world, building an innovative tool isn’t enough. A product needs to find traction among a niche group of users and grow from there. Tan did not disclose user figures, so it’s difficult to ascertain how much the site has grown. But according to SimilarWeb, the site’s traffic jumped from 7,000 visits in December 2015 to 250,000 in January.

If that’s even half true, Notey is indeed showing promise, especially since its likely revenue model involves advertising – and that means attracting eyeballs.