#hitpad

INTRODUCING HITPAD – THE DAY’S MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Hitpad application for iPad allows users to “see what’s up” in the world that day

  Tel Aviv, Israel (Techonomy3) - April 5, 2011 - Instant Discover, Inc. today announced the availability of Hitpad, a new iPad application that allows users to quickly and easily “see what’s up” in the world that day.  Introduced onstage by founder and CEO Jay Meydad at the Techonomy3 conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Hitpad delivers rich, bite-sized information snippets about the most important and worth-knowing topics of the day, allowing users to become immediately current with very little effort. 

Unlike other iPad applications, Hitpad is not a visual news / RSS reader that sits on top of a curated list of sources or user’s social streams.  Instead, Hitpad’s servers determine what is worth knowing that given day by constantly tracking, measuring and analyzing different sources and applying proprietary algorithms to filter the noise. As users use the service, Hitpad learns their interests in order to deliver the most important information snippets in the areas that they care about most.

“With ever-growing amounts of content and our ability to consume it on new devices such as smartphones and tablets, we are increasingly challenged to focus our time on what’s new and important,” said Jay Meydad, CEO of Instant Discover, Inc.  “Hitpad does the work of distilling the most popular content and presents users with the important topics of the day, highlighting why they are important and may be of interest, all in a way that’s easily digested by the user. Five minutes with Hitpad is like spending an hour browsing around on the web.”

“As more and more content sources and social streams come into existence, it becomes harder to keep up with the true important stuff of the day,” said Orli Yakuel, Go2web20 Co-Founder and co-organizer of the Techonomy3 conference. “Hitpad addresses the real problem of information overload and gives me a meaningful way of cutting through the noise while its rich UI perfectly leverages the portability and unique user experience of the iPad, which takes a significant part of my life. We’re thrilled to have Jay, an accomplished Israeli entrepreneur, introduce Hitpad at Techonomy3.”

Hitpad’s home screen presents users with a list of the top trending topics of the day. Simply tapping a single trending topic delivers an aggregated view of everything you need to know about the item. At the top of the screen is a title and summary while below are the corresponding news stories, tweets, videos, images and web results with large previews. Users can then zoom into an individual item to read it (news or tweet), watch it (video) or see it (photos, web).  Finally, Hitpad lets users easily share any item by posting it to their Facebook wall, tweeting it to their Twitter account, emailing it to a friend or saving it for later reading using Instapaper.

Hitpad distinguishes itself from other visual news or feed readers in the following four ways:

Hitpad is a rich visual dashboard that tells you what the most important things you should know today in your areas of interest.

Hitpad is instrumentation by measuring, analyzing and determining what is important to consume in order to minimize reverb and improve discovery

Hitpad is agnostic to the publishers that are providing the data

Hitpad is tuned and personalized based on your interests

Hitpad is now available for free from iTunes and the App Store at: http://hitpad.com/download

About Instant Discover, Inc.

Instant Discover was founded by Jay Meydad at the end of 2010 in Pasadena, Calif. and is now operated from Tel Aviv. Prior to moving back to Israel from Los Angeles, Jay spent four years as the Vice President of Products and Operations at Snap.com (backed by Idealab and Mayfield Fund) and three years as the Vice President of Products at Spark Networks (AMEX: LOV, parent company of JDate.com). Nir Holtzman Ninio, the company’s CTO, was formerly the Director for Consumer Websites at LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) and two years as SW Development Manager at Kasamba.com (acquired by Liveperson). The company’s investors include Pasadena-based Idealab and Tom McGovern, CEO of Snap.com. For more information, please visit http://www.hitpad.com

  About Techonomy3

Techonomy3 is a platform/event to assist in the exposure of innovative Israeli based companies to the local and the worldwide market. The event focuses on companies who provide solutions that will also impact the community outside of Israel. Since Israel has a favored position in the worldwide technology market, Techonomy3 can provide positive connections to the European and US hub for the Israeli community. By leveraging the Israeli community, the local entrepreneur can develop a vocal fan base for their venture which will be supportive into the future. http://www.techonomy3.com/

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Press Contacts: 

Stephan West

Idealab for Instant Discover

(626) 685-4934

[email protected]    

  Teresa Bridwell

Idealab for Instant Discover

(626) 535-2886

Media Coverage Roundup Following Hitpad Launch at Techonomy3

Posted from: Ramat Gan, IsraelWe have received some nice media coverage following the launch: 

  * TechCrunch (english article & video) - Click Here

  * TheNextWeb (english article & video) - Click Here

  * NewsGeek (hebrew article, english video) - Click Here

  * TheMarker (hebrew article, english video) - Click Here    

  * Maariv (hebrew article) - Click Here

Hitpad made it to the Top 10 News apps in 36 hours

50 hours post launch - Hitpad is now #6 on the free News apps chart (US)

I would like to give some additional information that hopefully is going to answer questions we get about the differences between Hitpad and other news apps.

The main goal of Hitpad is to help you get up to speed with the most important topics of the day, in a range of categories, in very little effort and in no time. Users often don't have the time to sit and read many news stories and this is where Hitpad comes into the picture. 

Compared to visual social stream readers (like Flipboard) or visual news readers (like Pulse), Hitpad has several differences:

* Hitpad is instrumentation by measuring, analyzing and determining what is important to consume in order to minimize reverb and improve discovery. We highlight topics that might not appear in your social feeds since the people you follow don't tweet or post about them. In other cases, even if your friends tweet about something that might be in the news, you might miss it due to the nature of the stream. Overtime, we are going to blend in topics from your social streams while preserving the top topics concept.

* Hitpad displays more than just news stories but an overview about a topic that includes tweets, videos, photos, links and news articles.

* Hitpad is agnostic to the publishers that are providing the data vs the visual news readers who sit on top of a curated list of sources.

* Hitpad is tuned and personalized based on your interests and as you use the service you will get more and more topics in your areas of interest.

I hope this helps clarify some of the differences and why we see Hitpad as a complimentary app next to your favorite news reader or visual social streams reader.