CIRCLEME PRESS CENTER

INQUIRIES

Interested in writing a story about CircleMe? Get in touch with us at press@circleme.com



Some Past Press Coverage

What the media says about us:

Some international coverage:

Press Release

May 1st, 2016

EXA FUTURES ACQUIRES CIRCLEME ASSETS


The company behind CircleMe’s development, Cascaad Srl, has sold all its core assets to Exa Futures Srl. The acquisition by Exa Futures will enable to boost CircleMe’s evolution in terms of technology effectiveness and feature-richness of the consumer product.

Logo footer light
PRESS RELEASE

EXA FUTURES ACQUIRES CIRCLEME ASSETS

THE COMPANY BEHIND CIRCLEME’S DEVELOPMENT, CASCAAD SRL, HAS SOLD ALL ITS CORE ASSETS TO EXA FUTURES SRL. THE ACQUISITION BY EXA FUTURES WILL ENABLE TO BOOST CIRCLEME’S EVOLUTION IN TERMS OF TECHNOLOGY EFFECTIVENESS AND FEATURE-RICHNESS OF THE CONSUMER PRODUCT.
Milan – May 1st, 2016 – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the innovative network which enables people to engage with their interests, and all its related back-end technologies, have been acquired by Exa Futures Srl. The Italy-based company has acquired all assets related to CircleMe from the company Cascaad Srl.

The acquisition will imply a re-focus of the strategy to grow CircleMe on the market. Exa Futures will continue to invest on the technologies which enable for the development of the interest-graph and the collection and categorization of content. Furthermore, Exa Futures will seek for business opportunities by partnering with companies in need to access and distribute very relevant content to their clients or to empower content-personalization services.

The consumer-facing CircleMe interest-network will continue to be supported and developed, so to provide to potentially millions of people the opportunity to access the best content-experience on the Internet, where content is categorized, filtered and distributed only based on the transparent interest profile of the user.

ABOUT CIRCLEME CircleMe is an innovative interest-based network, which allows people to interact with their passions. Available on the web, on Android and iOS , its growing community is located primarily in USA, UK, Italy, France and Brazil. With an international team, CircleMe has won several prestigious awards globally, and today has created one of the richest interest-networks on the Internet, with 1+ million interests available in the database, 4+ million content pieces (increasing by 500-1000 per day), 7000+ verified sources of content and 70,000+ events in the Personal Calendar.

Website: www.circleme.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleMeTeam
Twitter: @CircleMe
App for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/circleme/id505991146
App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cascaad.circleme

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
February 16, 2015

CircleMe x Expo Milano 2015


WE-Women for Expo e CircleMe creano insieme un’appassionata comunità per condividere i temi che caratterizzeranno Expo Milano 2015: dalla nutrizione alla sostenibilità ambientale.

Logo footer light
Press release

CircleMe x Expo Milano 2015

CircleMe, l’innovativo network tutto italiano che permette ai suoi utenti di rimanere aggiornati sulle proprie passioni, da oggi entra a far parte delle piattaforme per la comunicazione social di Expo Milano 2015, per veicolare al grande pubblico il messaggio di WE-Women For Expo, un progetto di EXPO 2015 in collaborazione con il Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale e la Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori.
Milano, Italia - 16 Febbraio 2015 – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), il network di interessi che ti permette di connetterti giornalmente con le tue passioni, ha avviato una collaborazione con We-Women for Expo, con l’obiettivo di creare una comunità online di persone che potranno successivamente incontrarsi e scambiarsi opinioni e idee in occasione degli eventi in programma durante il semestre di Expo Milano 2015. Questo permetterà di raggiungere un pubblico potenzialmente molto coinvolto sui temi trattati, legati alla sostenibilità ambientale,a una nuova alleanza tra cibo e cultura e all’immenso potenziale femminile.

Questo sarà possibile grazie alla tecnologia di CircleMe che permette ai suoi utenti di esprimere le proprie preferenze e di rimanere costantemente aggiornati su tutto ciò che ritengono importante per loro, dal punto di vista culturale, dell’entertainment e delle tematiche sociali. Su CircleMe è già possibile trovare una pagina di interesse dedicata a WE-Women For Expo, con numerosi articoli e contenuti associati. La pagina è gestita dal team Social Media di WE- Women For Expo, con la collaborazione di CircleMe. Pagina di interesse: www.circleme.com/items/we-women-for-expo
Utente di Women for Expo: www.circleme.com/WEWomenForExpo


Il CEO di CircleMe Giuseppe D’Antonio ha dichiarato: “Per CircleMe questa è una grande opportunità per dimostrare la qualità del nostro lavoro e la passione che gli utenti della nostra piattaforma hanno espresso sui temi che riguardano l’Expo 2015. La collaborazione con WE- Women For Expo ci permette di fornire ai nostri utenti contenuti rilevanti e interessanti legati ai temi che saranno fra pochi mesi sulla bocca di tutti e che da Milano coinvolgeranno il mondo.”

La collaborazione, che prende il via questa settimana, prevede di coinvolgere migliaia di persone e raggiungerà non solo gli utenti italiani di CircleMe, ma tutta la sua comunità, visto il grande afflusso di visitatori dall’estero che si prevede a Milano durante l’Expo 2015.

Cos’è CircleMe? CircleMe è un innovativo network per la condivisione di interessi, che consente alle persone di interagire con le proprie passioni. E’ disponibile come sito web e come app per Android, iOS e BlackBerry in tutto il mondo ed è utilizzata particolarmente in: Stati Uniti, Regno Unito, Italia, Francia e Brasile. CircleMe nasce da un’intuizione di Giuseppe D’Antonio ed Erik Lumer nel 2011 e viene lanciata ufficialmente nel 2012. Il progetto ha ricevuto dal VC Innogest Capital finanziamenti per un totale di oltre 2 milioni di euro. Con un team internazionale basato tra Milano e Londra, ha vinto diversi premi internazionali tra cui il prestigioso AppCircus UK, ed è stata una delle due startup italiane finaliste al Mobile Premiere Award 2013, organizzato dal Mobile World Congress di Barcellona.

Sito web: www.circleme.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleMeTeam
Twitter: @CircleMe
App for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/circleme/id505991146
App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cascaad.circleme

Cos’è WE-Women for Expo? WE-Women for Expo è un progetto di Expo Milano 2015 promosso dal Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale e da Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori. WE è il grande network di donne di tutto il mondo chiamate a far rete su nutrimento e sostenibilità. L’impegno di WE si rivolge a combattere lo spreco e vuole farlo ribaltando la logica, ragionando non sulla privazione ma sul suo contrario, la prosperità, soffermandosi sulle risorse che esistono e su come condividerle in modo equo. È mettendo a buon frutto le pratiche virtuose che le donne di tutto il mondo vogliono condividere, che WE mira a definire nuovi standard di sostenibilità, perché dai piccoli gesti possono nascere grandi cambiamenti.

Sito web: www.we.expo2015.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WomenforExpo
Twitter: @WEWomenForExpo
CircleMe: www.circleme.com/WEWomenForExpo

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
August 13, 2014

CircleMe launches the ‘Personal Interests Calendar’ on Android and iOS


With mobile counting more than 50% of overall traffic, CircleMe launches its new Personal Interest Calendar feature on both iOS and Android’s platforms, enabling its users to access more than 60,000 events for 5,500 locations, based on their specific personal interests. With this new feature CircleMe, which continues to build on the promise of keeping people up-to-date on all their interests, now enables users to never miss again an event of interest, informing and alerting them on the go.

Logo footer light
Press release

CircleMe launches the ‘Personal Interests Calendar’ on Android and iOS

With mobile counting more than 50% of overall traffic, CircleMe launches its new Personal Interest Calendar feature on both iOS and Android’s platforms, enabling its users to access more than 60,000 events for 5,500 locations, based on their specific personal interests. With this new feature CircleMe, which continues to build on the promise of keeping people up-to-date on all their interests, now enables users to never miss again an event of interest, informing and alerting them on the go.
London & Milan – August 13th, 2014 – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the innovative network which enables people to engage with their interests, today launches its newest feature on its mobile devices: the Personal Interests Calendar. The Personal Interests Calendar allows CircleMe users (on all Android and iOS devices) to get a personalized agenda pre-populated with any event related to their personal interests.

With more than 60,000 events for 5,500 locations around the globe covered from the outset, any CircleMe user will have interesting events suggested to them while on the go. CircleMe’s technologies learn about one’s interests and suggest any type of event, from concerts to vernissages, from new movie releases to theatre shows, always taking into consideration the user’s current or chosen location.

CircleMe users can invite friends and like-minded people to join events with them, fostering interaction between people who share same or similar interests related to events occurring in a specific location. Finally, users can now proceed to booking tickets for shows, concerts, movies, and more or just view additional information on the event, thanks to integrations with leading services such as iTunes®, Songkick and Rotten Tomatoes®.

“We have received a very positive response about our Personal Interests Calendar functionality on www.circleme.com, hence bringing it to mobile was the natural next-step. We are excited to do it today, as these days our apps are getting great traction and global recognition.” said Giuseppe D’Antonio, CircleMe founder and CEO. “I am certain that our users will love this new feature conceptualized to have anyone enjoy their interests even more in real life. Wouldn’t anyone love to have a personal assistant inform them, ahead of time, of all the interesting events happening around them? Well, we aim to do this for at least 1 million different world interests, so add all your likes to learn about all their related events near you”

The CircleMe mobile app, recently featured worldwide as a ‘staff pick’ by both Google Play and Blackberry World, has been getting global recognition and fast adoption by a wide customer base. The new calendar feature will now enable CircleMe users to switch seamlessly from the web to the mobile apps, managing the same personal calendar filled with upcoming events of interest.

Today CircleMe users will still enjoy the content aggregated and distributed on the platform, which has reached new records, with thousands of daily content posts coming from 7,000 sources of information and associated to the 1 million interest-elements available in the interest-graph.

Thanks to a top-notch interface, sophisticated semantic technologies and advanced social recommendation systems, CircleMe offers to its users a quick and dynamic way to enjoy their passions, discover new ones (through smart serendipity) and meet like-minded people. From today, the Personal Interests Calendar feature adds one more dimension to enable people to enjoy their passions even more in real life.

About Circleme CircleMe is an innovative interest-based network, which allows people to interact with their passions. Available on the web, on Android, iOS and BlackBerry, its growing community is located primarily in USA, UK, Italy, France and Brazil. CircleMe is the brainchild of Giuseppe D’Antonio and Erik Lumer and was officially launched in 2012. The project has received three rounds of fundings by VC Innogest Capital for a total investment of 2 million Euros. With an international team based in London and Milan, CircleMe has won several prestigious awards including AppCircus UK, and was selected as one of the 20 start-ups for the Mobile Premiere Award 2013 organised during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Website: www.circleme.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleMeTeam
Twitter: @CircleMe
App for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/circleme/id505991146
App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cascaad.circleme

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
December 10, 2013

CircleMe launches immersive interest-based platform for Android


The new CircleMe Android app allows users to immerse themselves in their interests with a content focussed platform and geo-locating features

Logo footer light
Press release

CircleMe launches immersive interest-based platform for Android

The new CircleMe Android app allows users to immerse themselves in their interests with a content focussed platform and geo-locating features.
London & Milan – December 10th, 2013 – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the innovative network which enables people to engage with their interests, today launches its first Android application.

The CircleMe app has been developed to help users discover content around their interests through news articles, videos, user posts and conversations, images and much more. Users can also check out the ‘Discovery’ feed to find new interests, people with similar passions and topics that have been associated with specific locations related to that individual.

CircleMe has geo-locating features that allow people to discover content relative to their interests and location. The ‘Plant’ function lets users associate an interest to a physical location, providing further content to anyone else who shares the same interest and is near the corresponding location. For example if the user makes a ‘plant’ at the ‘Hello, my name is Paul Smith’ exhibition, any other CircleMe user who has listed Paul Smith as a particular passion of theirs will receive an alert about the exhibition when they are in the area.

Other features include:
  • Through the ‘Like’ function, users can express their personal interests to have related content delivered back to them
  • The ‘Trust’ function allows users to create a personal circle of people who have similar interests
  • Users can also add interests to a ‘To Do’ area allowing them to visit an interest at a later date and explore it further

With one million interests already available on CircleMe, users have a wealth of content to discover but can also suggest and add new interests, even becoming content curators for specific pages.

Furthermore, thanks to the integration with services such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Freebase (Google), Last.fm, Foursquare and Wine.com, CircleMe can ensure additional content access to millions of other potential passions.

“We see CircleMe as an innovative network that’s disrupting the limitations of traditional social networks,” says Giuseppe D’Antonio, CircleMe founder and CEO. “We wanted to offer consumers a platform to engage with their interests in a more content-focussed and intuitive way, and at the same time, be able to encounter new potential interests in what appears to be a ‘random discovery’ experience.”

The CircleMe app is available for free from the Google Play store for all Android- based smartphones and tablets.

About Circleme CircleMe ( www.circleme.com) is an innovative interest-based network, which allows people to interact with their passions, disrupting the limitations of traditional social networks. Available on the web and through an iPhone app, CircleMe has a growing community of users located mostly in Great Britain, USA, Italy, France and Brazil. CircleMe is the brainchild of Giuseppe D’Antonio and Erik Lumer, and was officially launched in 2012. The project has received three rounds of funding by Innogest Capital for a total investment of 2 million Euros. With an international team based in Milan and London, CircleMe has won several prestigious awards and it was one of the top-20 startups at the Mobile Premiere Award 2013 organized by the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At the present time, CircleMe has developed active collaborations with iTunes, Songkick and Cibando.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
November 28, 2013

Christmas Gifts to those who Cultivate their Interests on CircleMe


For this coming Christmas, the network of interests reserves to its users unique and exclusive gifts: personalised cards and the opportunity to download free legal music.

Logo footer light
Press release

Christmas Gifts to those who Cultivate their Interests on CircleMe

For this coming Christmas, the network of interests reserves to its users unique and exclusive gifts: personalised cards and the opportunity to download free legal music.
London & Milan – November 28th, 2013 – On CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the innovative network that enhances the interaction between people and their interests, you can already find your Christmas presents, unique and exclusive for the ones who never stop cultivating their passions.

Just sign in (also with your Facebook account) on www.circleme.com to enjoy two special promotions conceived by CircleMe to celebrate Christmas within the network's community.

Unique business cards customised with your own interests
hanks to the partnership with MOO.COM, an international company specialised in the creation and printing of business cards, all CircleMe users can benefit of a gift of 50 ‘CircleMe Personal Cards’, featured with exclusive and unique design. The CircleMe Personal Cards are in fact created on each specific user profile data: a top selection of a user’s interests will be printed on the back of the card, while the front of it will be left for all users personal contact details.

The packs of 50 cards are a gift to all CircleMe users, past and future. The only expense expected by the Circler is the shipping fee.

To create your own personalised cards, just follow this link: http://www.circleme.com/personal_cards and at the bottom of the page click on "Get Cards". Then you will be asked to fill in your personal details and to select your favorite passions in order to get your personalised cards. After few quick steps and in a matter of days you will have the cards delivered to your doorsteps.

Be active on CircleMe and download your favorite music for free.
Thanks to the partnership with Kiver, a digital marketing agency, CircleMe will reward the platform most active users with music MP3 files downloadable for free. The music songs can be selected from the extensive database of FreeHit, the downloading platform by Kiver.

To get this gift is very easy: you just need to show to be active on CircleMe by inviting your friends to try the platform (http://www.circleme.com/users/import), or becoming an influential user increasing your followers on CircleMe, or additionally, posting consistently original content and interesting news for the community. Moreover, it may be just enough to like on CircleMe your favorite singer or band: some of them may give you access to the un-missable music treat giving you 3 songs free to download.

The user who gets the right to download the free music songs will see a vinyl icon displayed on the right side of any page on CircleMe. At that point, with just a click, the user will be able to select from Kiver’s database which songs to download.

"Music is certainly one of the most shared passions on the internet and in the real world, so we have joined without any hesitation the initiative by CircleMe that allows the most active users to create their own Christmas holidays soundtrack with MP3 files from FreeHit by Kiver" says Fabio Bovini Cervio, Head of Business Development at Kiver. "A real gift for influential users in the CircleMe community.

CircleMe is a virtual place where you can live, increase and discover what you love in life. Available on the web and as an iPhone app, on CircleMe it is possible to connect with 1 million passions classified by categories as, for example: Music, Movies, Books, Famous people. In addition to those, people can access 11 million more potential interests (items), accessible thanks to the integration with various databases. The users have the possibility to suggest and add new interests but also to become curators of the content of the item-pages (http://www.circleme.com/curated_items), in order to participate actively to the growth of the platform.

About Circleme CircleMe ( www.circleme.com) is an innovative interest-based network, which allows people to interact with their passions, disrupting the limitations of traditional social networks. Available on the web and through an iPhone app, CircleMe has a growing community of users located mostly in Great Britain, USA, Italy, France and Brazil. CircleMe is the brainchild of Giuseppe D’Antonio and Erik Lumer, and was officially launched in 2012. The project has received three rounds of funding by Innogest Capital for a total investment of 2 million Euros. With an international team based in Milan and London, CircleMe has won several prestigious awards and it was one of the top-20 startups at the Mobile Premiere Award 2013 organized by the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At the present time, CircleMe has developed active collaborations with iTunes, Songkick and Cibando.

Website: www.circleme.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleMeTeam
Twitter: @CircleMe
App for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/circleme/id505991146
App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cascaad.circleme

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
October 1, 2013

CircleMe announces new funding and 1 million passions in its interest-graph


Far from being the typical social network, CircleMe wants to become the #1 reference point for people who want to dive deep into their passions and interests. Its ambitious goal is to become the most valuable interest-based network on the web. With 180,000 pages dedicated to famous people, 160,000 pages covering worldwide locations worth seeing, and in general 1 million interests already mapped and enriched with plenty of media content, many people are starting to make CircleMe their go-to destination for content related to what their interests in life are.

Logo footer light
Press release

CircleMe announces new funding and 1 million passions in its interest-graph

Far from being the typical social network, CircleMe wants to become the #1 reference point for people who want to dive deep into their passions and interests. Its ambitious goal is to become the most valuable interest-based network on the web. With 180,000 pages dedicated to famous people, 160,000 pages covering worldwide locations worth seeing, and in general 1 million interests already mapped and enriched with plenty of media content, many people are starting to make CircleMe their go-to destination for content related to what their interests in life are.
London & Milan – October 1st, 2013 – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the innovative network which allows people to interact directly with their interests in life, has the ambitious goal to become the reference interest-based network of the web. With over 1 million passions in the network, all enriched by dedicated media content, and with an average of 5000 new content posts performed per month (growing at a rate of 30% per month), CircleMe is becoming the go-to destination for people who want to keep up to date with their interests, dive deep into their passions and discover what drives them in life.

As the company just secured a new round of venture capital investment from Innogest Capital Sgr, bringing total funding for the project at over 2 million Euros, CircleMe now can focus on content partnerships to bring more relevant content and updates to their users. The company will also extend its international presence outside of the five key countries where it experienced initial traction (i.e., Italy, USA, UK, France & Brazil).

Due to the ever-growing role of Planting, CircleMe has now enhanced this feature by opening the door to partners to provide plants with the addition of ‘Plant Guides’ available exclusively through the CircleMe iPhone app.

Available on the web and through an iOS app, the team is now working on the Android app, which will be launched in November 2013.


A World of Passions on CircleMe
Thanks to a top-notch user-interface, sophisticated semantic analysis and advanced social recommendation technology, it is simple and straightforward for the users of CircleMe to interact with their interests: people can find over 1 million passions (growing from 300,000 available at launch in 2012) with lots of associated content and continued updates, with the possibility to insert new stories, share videos and post their opinions. The numerous items are organized in different thematic categories such as 'Music', 'Movies', 'TV', 'Places,' Books', 'Heroes, 'Food&Drink', 'Passions', ‘Goods’ and ‘Other’ or available through search.

Furthermore, thanks to the integration with services such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Freebase (Google), Last.fm, Foursquare and Wine.com, CircleMe can ensure additional content access to millions of other potential passions.

As of today, the most popular categories include 'Heroes’ (i.e., famous people such as Johnny Depp, Tim Burton and Steve Jobs) and 'Places' (e.g., New York,  London and Italy), which feature 180,000 and 160,000 content pages respectively, full of relevant news about each specific topic.

Worth noticing, the new category ‘Goods’ (which includes items such as “Nutella” or “iPhone”) has been growing organically in the recent weeks and now has reached 10,000 items. For any of these interests, the users not only express their preference (through a “Like” action) but also their potential intention to consume (through a “To-Do” action): this signals a significant business opportunity for digital marketing and display advertising offerings within the platform.

Within any of the 1 million pages related to the different passions, users can also find relevant media content related to the specific interest, including videos, pictures, free e-book chapters, iTunes music samples, concert dates and locations, users’ posts and much more.


A Journey to the Centre of Your Passions

CircleMe is a very easy network to use: while creating your own profile, you are asked to express your ‘likes’ (or passions) or to import existing ones from your profile on other platforms (such as Facebook). CircleMe then begins to suggest content and services related to your passions. Moreover, the system suggests other interests that may be relevant to those already expressed, so that you can browse among millions of topics and interests that can be found in our database, or even create new items to better complete your interest profile. When you find an interesting item, you can express your appreciation (‘Like’), or the intention to deepen your knowledge about it (‘To Do’) or even locate it to a physical place (‘Plant’), in order to provide geo-referenced information about this item to other users who share the same interest.

“CircleMe.com has been created to provide content and services to the users regarding topics that are really relevant to them, thanks to a system of “intelligent serendipity” which offers tips, ideas and suggestions according to their interests,” said Giuseppe D’Antonio, CircleMe founder and CEO. “Our users create a real network of passions and discover new ones simply expressing their ‘like’ on the page associated with the specific item. The interaction with other people is stimulated only if there are similar tastes and a base of common interests, exactly as it happens in real life”.

Here you can find a tutorial video that shows how CircleMe works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPh5XMDkZ4I


About Circleme CircleMe ( www.circleme.com) is an innovative interest-based network, which allows people to interact with their passions, disrupting the limitations of traditional social networks. Available on the web and through an iPhone app, CircleMe has a growing community of users located mostly in Great Britain, USA, Italy, France and Brazil. CircleMe is the brainchild of Giuseppe D’Antonio and Erik Lumer, and was officially launched in 2012. The project has received three rounds of funding by Innogest Capital for a total investment of 2 million Euros. With an international team based in Milan and London, CircleMe has won several prestigious awards and it was one of the top-20 startups at the Mobile Premiere Award 2013 organized by the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At the present time, CircleMe has developed active collaborations with iTunes, Songkick and Cibando.

Website: www.circleme.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleMeTeam
Twitter: @CircleMe
App for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/circleme/id505991146
App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cascaad.circleme

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
August 29, 2012

CircleMe adds ‘Plant Guides’ to its service


Popular restaurant finder app Cibando is the first company to leverage this plant collection partnership opportunity

Logo footer light
Press release

CircleMe adds ‘Plant Guides’ to its service

Popular restaurant finder app Cibando is the first company
to leverage this plant collection partnership opportunity
LONDON, UK – CircleMe (www.circleme.com), the social network that connects you to the things you love and to people around the world who share your interests, is adding service-enhancing ‘Plant Guides’, curated collections of plants. Cibando (www.cibando.com), a leading restaurant finder app and highly regarded media content producer, is the first company to leverage this partnership opportunity.

Ever since launching publicly in March 2012, CircleMe has experienced very healthy growth, with its iPhone app enjoying the greatest success and acclaim. Planting, CircleMe’s geo-tagging feature that allows users to leave likes in specific locations and to discover new ones as they walk around town, has been crucial to this.

Due to the ever-growing role of Planting, CircleMe has now enhanced this feature by opening the door to partners to provide plants with the addition of ‘Plant Guides’ available exclusively through the CircleMe iPhone app.

‘Plant Guides’ are collections of plants, grouped by either theme or topic. This will allow users to browse things related to the things they are passionate about. The first three collections are Restaurants in Italy, Boutique shops and Art Masterpieces. Other collections will follow in the forthcoming weeks.

Potential partners are already seeing the potential in ‘Plant Guides’, which seek to offer CircleMe users interesting and organized content, whilst giving partners the opportunity to leverage the fast-growing user base to distribute their content.

Cibando, the restaurant finder app that reached the 450,000 downloads milestone to date and counts over 400,000 fans on Facebook, has been the first company to realize the potential of these partnerships. Cibando will provide the featured Restaurants in Italy ‘Plant Guide’ on CircleMe.

“We are very excited to start offering 'Plant Guides’ to Circlers, delivering on the promise to geo-localize all sorts of different content for our users, depending on their passions in life,” says Giuseppe D’Antonio, CEO of CircleMe “Cibando has been the perfect partner, realizing this potential immediately and quickly jumping on board with a nicely curated collection of top rated restaurants; we think many other partners will be interested in providing their content through our platform, increasing their visibility with users that engage with relevant content while in mobility.”

“Guk Kim, CEO of Cibando says “Cibando makes finding restaurants tastier. Our premium restaurant content provides users with an unforgettable and unique dining experience. It was only natural for us to embrace CircleMe’s philosophy and partner to provide our users with more variegated and facilitated choices.”

About CircleMe

CircleMe (from the company Cascaad) is pioneering a new generation of social networking based on all the things you like, rather than simply who you know. Alongside world-class user interface design, the service is powered by cutting-edge semantic and social recommendation technology that provides a leap forward in our ability to discover new information and people of personal interest. The company, VC backed for €2.5M and with offices in London (UK) and Milan (Italy), is 10-people strong, with broad and relevant experience in companies and institutions as diverse as Google, Yahoo!, TripAdvisor, Sony, Babelgum, Dada, XeroxPARC, Stanford & Purdue University.

About Cibando

Founded by Guk Kim, Cibando operates a popular iOS and Android application that makes it easy to find restaurants in Italy. Users simply draw a circle on a map to select how far they’re willing to search, and select their preferred restaurant category, cuisine type and price range. Cibando then lists the best restaurants that match the user’s requests, providing an overview that includes mouthwatering photos, news, tips and loads of other helpful information that allow users to connect directly to the restaurant's website, call to make a reservation, check out the restaurant's menu in advance, and build a list of personal favorites.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com
March 15, 2012

CircleMe, the social network based on the things you like, launches today with disruptive mobile ‘planting’


iPhone app lets users geo-tag the city to trigger ambient serendipity

Logo footer light
Press release
[under embargo until Thursday March 15 2012]

CircleMe, the social network based on the things you like,
launches today with disruptive mobile ‘planting’

iPhone app lets users geo-tag the city to trigger ambient serendipity
LONDON, UK – CircleMe, the social network that connects you to the things you love and to people around the world who share your interests, is opening today to the public its website (www.circleme.com) after six months in closed beta.

The website will be accompanied at launch by a mobile app for iPhone that extends to the physical world CircleMe's focus on the expression and discovery of things we like. Users of the app will be able to 'plant' around town any item they chose (e.g. a song, a book, a movie, a venue, a famous person) along with an associated message for others to enjoy. People can then actively explore what has been publicly planted near them. They will also get alerted automatically when they walk by a plant from someone in their trusted network, even when the phone is in their pocket.

CircleMe is not a social network in the traditional sense

Prominent NY-based venture capitalist Fred Wilson recently asked 8th graders: "if you had the coding skills to build anything, what would you build?” One answer from an eighth grader was that “he wanted to build a better social network, one that was based on the things that interested him and one that would connect him with kids around the world that were interested in the same things.” [Reference: avc.com]

“We had the same vision and luckily also the coding skills. CircleMe is an inspiring social network that connects you first of all with ... yourself, i.e. with all the cultural items that contribute to shape a person’s identity” explains CircleMe’s founder and Executive Chairman, Erik Lumer. “Our goal is to provide a better way for people to track and engage with the things that interest them. At the same time, CircleMe makes it easy to connect with people that have overlapping tastes, discover new things and expand one’s cultural horizons.”

Ambient discovery has finally arrived

A new breed of smartphone apps is coming to market, leveraging location-based technologies to provide an automatic ‘ambient sensing’ of what occurs nearby. For instance, much attention in recent days has been given to the crop of apps that alert you when like- minded people are nearby. In this context, the CircleMe iPhone app opens an entirely new space of possibilities, by letting people plant around town and automatically discover anything of potential interest.

“The use cases for plants are virtually infinite: recommending a good book at the bookstore or an ongoing exhibit in a museum, highlighting a place where a famous person used to live, leaving surprises to friends like a song that they can immediately listen to when stumbling upon the plant, and so on - states CircleMe’s CEO, Giu D’Antonio – Such planting behavior could become a game changer on how the physical and digital worlds get coupled to foster serendipitous discoveries”.

About CircleMe

CircleMe is pioneering a new generation of social networks based on all the things you like rather than simply who you know. Besides a world-class user interface design, the service is also powered by cutting-edge semantic and social recommendation technologies that provide a leap forward in our ability to discover new information and people of personal interest.

The company behind CircleMe, Cascaad Ltd/Srl, was founded by Erik Lumer, former researcher (Xerox Parc and Stanford University) turned serial entrepreneur (co-founder and CEO of Babelgum). Giuseppe D’Antonio, CEO of Cascaad, brings many years of business experience at digital companies both small and large (Google, Dada, Manhattan Associates). The company has a staff of 11, with offices in London (UK) and Milan (Italy). It has raised $2.5 million in funding from VC firm Innogest Capital.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

CircleMe Press Office
press@circleme.com

This site uses cookies to give the best and personalised experience. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Find out more here.

Sign Up or Login

Invalid username or password
Not yet on CircleMe? Join now
Please input a email
Please input a valid email
Max 50 characters
Email already in use
{{email_serverError}}
Please input a username
Min 3 characters
Max 20 characters
Please use only A-Z, 0-9 and "_"
Username is taken
Please input a password
Min 6 characters
Max 20 characters
By clicking the icons, you agree to CircleMe terms & conditions
Already have an account? Login Now