RSS reader Feeds2.com uses personalization to solve problem of "information overload"

This past week I spoke with Dr. Nicholas Ampazis, founder & CEO of Feeds 2 and parent company GTP Solutions of Athens, Greece. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here (MP3, 12.7MB, 14 minutes) or clicking below.

Feeds 2 is a free RSS aggregator that utilizes advanced personalization technologies to introduce you to news you will find most interesting. The website is easy to use and truly addresses the problem of "information overload." That is, there are now so many blogs talking about similar issues that it is important to identify the articles most relevant to you.

One feature enables you to visualize the connections between links in articles, as well as easily navigate to the stories in question. This helps understand connections between stories as they developed and make sense of commentary that is spread across multiple blog posts on multiple blogs.

Feeds 2 is currently seeking venture funding. Its founder told me they are looking for about $1 million and he will be in the United States sometime in the next month. A spart of its business model, Feeds 2 wants to develop an enterprise solution to deliver personalized feeds to executives.

To find out more about Feeds 2, check out their demos.

There is clearly room for improvements in blog readers to enable people to get to the content they need faster and better. In terms of sustainable competitive advantage, it is too early to tell which personalization engine will stake a firm claim.

Feeds 2 podcast questions:

1. What is Feeds 2? (0:20)
2. What makes you unique to other personalization engines, such as Findory? (1:28)
3. What do you consider to be the best part of Feeds 2? (2:20)
4. How does the personalization engine work? (3:39)
5. What is the extent of your intellectual property? What do you holds patents for? (4:47)
6. Who do you consider to be your closest competitors? (5:25)
7. What do you think of Microsoft's introduction of RSS to IE 7.0? How does that fit into the picture? (5:56)
8. There has been lot of criticism about "web 2.0" services not being designed for mainstream usage. How did you think about that in crafting Feeds 2? (6:50)
9. How are you or do you plan to promote Feeds 2? (7:52)
10. How do you see Feeds 2 working as an enterprise solution? (8:44)
11. Do you have venture financing? (9:32)
12. How much funding are you seeking to meet your business needs? (10:11)
13. What is the business model for Feeds 2? (10:56)
14. With enterprises, what kind of pricing model would you use? (11:40)
15. It seems Feeds 2 is addressing information overload. Do you have some more thoughts on how you think about solving information overload, and perhaps you can speak to feedback from your users with respect to the effectiveness of personalization? (12:03)