“The Intelligent Distribution Channel for Changes on the Web.”

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog

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Rikard Kjellberg is the CEO and co-founder of IngBoo, an online marketplace for information updates.  Involved in communications and Internet industries for over 20 years, Kjellberg has deep technical experience in the wireless communications.  He pioneered the first mobile e-commerce solution for mass-consumer deployments as the co-founder and CTO of Ellipsus Systems.  When Ellipsus was acquired by Openwave Systems in 2002, Rikard continued to lead the business unit that carried the Ellipsus’ solution. Most recently, Rikard has been the Vice President of Products at Venturi Wireless, overseeing all aspects of product development of the Venturi Optimization solution for mobile Internet broadband.  Previously, Rikard was CTO at SAAB TransponderTech, a provider of wireless and mobile communication products. Rikard holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Vaxjö University and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stockholm University.

IngBoo’s mission is stated on their site as: “The Intelligent Distribution Channel for Changes on the Web.”  The firm was founded in 2008 with a mission to remove information clutter from people’s lives.  With all the information available on the web, all the new information being added every day, and all the publishers trying to compete for consumer attention, IngBoo offers a high attention e-relationship channel to solve this problem.  Traditional online marketing tools are losing their effectiveness and IngBoo is returning the control to the consumer.

MO:
How does IngBoo differ from a traditional RSS feed?  How does it save time and organize data?

Rikard:
IngBoo allows a web publisher to syndicate content based on user intent, utilizing on-site search, article tags and other resources such as RSS feeds. For example, a user may be looking for a job, a deal or articles defined by certain keywords. With IngBoo, the publisher can establish a permanent connection to the user, defined by the user-expressed keywords for ongoing updates and sharing. We deliver these updates into the most popular destinations on the web like Facebook and Twitter, instead of an RSS reader. IngBoo consolidates and organizes updates by importance, age and user interactions which help the users to focus on content that really matters to them. While Facebook and Twitter are extremely popular destinations, they are inherently noisy. We help the user see through that noise.

IngBoo on NBC Bay Area

MO:

What was the catalyst to this new way of organizing and filtering data.  Did it grow out of the frustrations that you experienced yourself with information overload?

Rikard:
My co-founder, Furkan Khan and I were in similar life situations. We were busy with work and private life, often with conflicting agendas. We were using the Internet to conduct business on a daily basis. We were being inundated with information, finding it harder and harder to separate relevant information from stuff that could be deferred or ignored. This is a huge problem that impacts web publishers and the consumers alike.

MO:
Are publishers attracted to this new way of organizing information for viewers?  How does this work to their advantage?

Rikard:
Research show that if you can increase consumer relevance in your content flow, you increase consumer attention by several multiples. This translates into more revisits and increased reach through content sharing. However, increased reach and relevance are generally conflicting objectives. IngBoo resolves that conflict by providing the publisher tools which allow consumers to connect with search results and article tags.

MO:
There are obviously benefits on both sides of the fence to consumers and publishers.  What means are you using to market or attract users and publishers?

Rikard:
We work primarily with publishers to integrate and deploy our solution. When we then launch with publishers, we jointly promote to the user-base in order to create awareness of the user benefits. This is typically done via on-site promotions and outreach via other means, such as email. We have made it very easy for publishers to deploy IngBoo. You deploy some HTML code. All the heavy lifting is done in the IngBoo cloud. For publishers who use WordPress, we have a plugin that turns the Facebook Like button into a powerful syndication tool for article tags.

MO:
Is IngBoo most practical as a consumer tool to organize job searches, news sites, etc. or does it also have strong business applications as well?

Rikard:
We have publishers who use our cloud service to power job searches, deal searches article searches, keyword-defined connections and just plain RSS connectivity. Enterprises could be using the service to set up preview portals for key topics, for example. Tha applications are really only limited by our own imaginations. We have provided an open application interface so that other developers can leverage the power of the IngBoo cloud and take us into new markets.

MO:
Ellipsus Systems, your previous startup, was sold to Openwave Systems for close to $20 million after only a few years.  How did you develop that company into such a powerhouse so rapidly?  Are you looking to match that success with IngBoo?

Rikard:
Ellipsus benefitted to some extent from the hype around the Internet but also suffered during the dot-com bust in 2001. Since we were very focused on mobile and had begun securing deals with large service providers like Sprint, we were somewhat shielded. As it turned out, the Ellipsus application store production was a great roadmap fit for Openwave. We believe IngBoo will emerge as the leading solution for business-to-consumer sharing into social networks. As such, we can sustain alone, forge strategic partnerships and go from there.