XYDO secures $1.25 seed for social news 3.0

Ronny Kerr · June 7, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1b46

The New Digg? Twitter on steroids? XYDO has some ambitious titles to live up to

Social news site XYDO announced Tuesday that it has closed a $1.25 million seed round of funding led by EPIC Ventures, a Draper Fisher Jurveston (DFJ) Global Network partner fund, with participation from several angel investors in San Francisco, New York and Salt Lake City.

("XYDO" is spoken as a word, not an abbreviaton, so that it rhymes with "Fido.")

User testimonials have branded XYDO as everything from “what New Digg was supposed to be” to “Twitter on steroids.” Even Jeffrey Bates, co-founder of Slashdot.org, said "if Reddit and Hacker News are social news 2.0, XYDO is clearly 3.0 and beyond.” But many players have tried and are still trying to pin down social news; what makes XYDO any different?

Well, right from the get-go, the site is useful to any and all users, socially-connected or not. The main page, collecting data from various sources across the Web, aggregates and orders news bits based on their significance to a global audience. As I write this, I see bits about Yemen’s president and radiation in Japan under “World News,” Apple WWDC news under “Technology,” and so on for ensuing sections.

Celebrities, sports, health, style, gadgets--the list of categories goes on for awhile.

Which is why XYDO doesn’t get really powerful until you sign up. You can sign up with just your basic information, or you can log in with Facebook and/or Twitter, which is clearly the fastest way to teach the site what topics interest you the most. After a few minutes, XYDO will offer up a page of “Your News.” For me, that means all the hottest technology business news.

As one would expect from a social news site, you can thumbs up (green arrow up?) stories you like and do the opposite for content that doesn’t interest you. In addition, clicking a link opens the page with a special XYDO toolbar at top, which allows users to continue exploring more sites without going back to the main XYDO page. (If you’ve ever used StumbleUpon, this won’t be new to you.)

“At no time in history has demand been greater for quality, personalized news and tools that help to separate signal from noise,” said Nick Efstratis, a managing director at EPIC Ventures, who is joining XYDO’s board of directors.

In the end, XYDO will only succeed if it can grow organically, which comes by providing an intelligent and relevant social news hub. Just launched in May, the service now has over a million curating contributors.

XYDO will use its seed funding to further develop product and expand the team.

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