Discover New People and Interests with Converge

Meg Rayford November 10, 2011 Tweet

You know how Amazon always seems to find great products you’ll like, based on your browsing and purchasing behaviors? DC-based Converge is applying this concept to your social networks so you can discover people you don’t know yet, but probably should.

Founders Collin Anderson and Dan Snyder (not to be confused with the Redskins’ owner) started Converge to provide users with a free tool to facilitate meeting friends, romantic interests, and roommates with little or no effort.

Founded earlier this year, Converge is a social discovery platform that derives its results from data collected in users’ pre-existing social networking sites, and other venues of expressed interests. When a user signs into the site, the application requests permission to pull in their data from sites like Facebook, Last.FM and Twitter. Converge uses this data to recommend products like music, movies and books. However, Converge’s real appeal will be matching people based on a multitude of statistically discovered themes.

Converge is creating a second space for interactions that aren’t taking place elsewhere. While people connect with acquaintances after even a minimal amount of in-person interaction, that initial encounter is still necessary to connect because networks like Facebook don’t allow for discovery. Converge aims to reduce stigmatization of searching for new acquaintances online.

Dan Snyder told us:

We believe fervently that these expressions of interest through ‘liking’ and ‘rating’ are one of the greatest untapped resources on the Internet.  Converge is about taking in as much data as users allow, incentivizing this process, and then understanding relationships in behavior through data. This process opens up hidden communities of people and media that are easy to miss, and makes the social web more relevant to people’s offline activities.

To get started on Converge’s discovery journey, visit their website and login with your Facebook account. Converge will take it from there!

If you are going to our Tech Cocktail DC mixer tonight, be sure to say hi to the Converge team, as they are one of our showcased startups.