New Startups to Watch For

The TechCrunch Disrupt tech show just wrapped a 3 day event in San Francisco. This show looks at the latest and most interesting innovations in the tech world, and gives a prize to one of them. But the point of the show is not the prize ($50,000) but the buzz some of them will get as a result.

Why is this important? Because it might so happen that in one of these companies lies the next advertising platform.

Here are some of the most interesting;

–          Tweetbeat –  Almost 90 million tweets are posted every single day. How can you get those that are most relevant to you? Enter Tweetbeat that sorts out the Tweets with what is called “Contextual Data Mining Technology” and sorts the top stories, trends and the time they peaked. The company was just sold to AOL.

–          Voxy – A company that aims to simplify learning a language. The idea behind it is that text books are boring, people would rather learn from life. The company offers games, news stories, magazines etc. on smartphones and on the web, that have translation tools built in. For the time being they are concentrating on the Spanish speakers who want to improve their English.

–          GameCrush – it’s a site where people can go to play games and meet the opposite sex. A combination of social media and paid gaming or a virtual bar where you can meet people who like the games you do. The company tested the site in March and it crushed because of enormous traffic. The site has been rewritten since and is up since Monday.

–          Gild – Offers a way for programmers looking for work to show off their skills through games and puzzles. This site can replace a resume, says the founder. You show your skills by completing tasks and being creative.

–          Qwiki – The people behind Qwiki believe we are too busy these to stop and read everything we are interested in. That’s where Qwiki comes in. Search for a topic and what will come up is a multimedia, narrated presentation of the subject. It can be used as an alarm clock; it can read aloud your incoming e mails, the weather report and the appointments of the day.

The last one –Qwiki  – won the grand prize.

Those are but a few startups that were presented at the show. There are many shows like this one and many startups looking for attention.