About Kiobo
Kiobo helps users enrich their browsing experience by making browsing a more social activity. We enable users to explore and leverage their social graph's browsing behavior. Users can effortlessly find not only new sites relevant to their interest but also people with similar browsing behavior.
Where are my friends browsing right now and where do they like to browse?
We enable you to see in real time where your friends and the community are browsing at this very instant. You can also focus on an particular friend and see what he has recently browsed, what sites he visits most frequently, or what his tag cloud looks like. However, this is possible only if your friend allows you to see where he is browsing.
Discover new sites of interest and people with similar browsing behavior
Once you download the toolbar, Kiobo's algorithms will analyze your browsing behavior and make recommendations based on where other people (particularly your friends) of similar interest like to browse. We will also show you people who have similar browsing behavior and allow you follow their browsing by enabling you to become their fan.
Leverage social graph's browsing to search for new sites based on area of interest
Wouldnt it be great if you could leverage your social graph's browsing behavior to find sites in an area of interest to you? When you do search in Kiobo we enable you to do just that. For example, if your friends are photographers and you want to learn which are the photography sites they visit, Kiobo is made for you
What is popular and upcoming?
At any given time, you can see a real time view of what tags and sites are popular on Kiobo. You can see how many people and who is browsing those sites. You may also explore and learn more about those people and about the topics which they are browsing. Think of it as Alexa.com on steroids. You can also see what some of the upcoming sites are a sort of advance peek into sites becoming newly popular.
Privacy control
Kiobo has a wide spectrum of privacy control options. You can use the toolbar to control the level of privacy you are most comfortable with For example, you can allow anyone to see what sites you browse or, if you don't feel comfortable with it, you can turn off the sharing all together with a simple click. You can also see, search and edit your past browsing history by using our clickstream manager where you can manage your privacy at an individual page level. A more detailed privacy policy is described here or visit our Screencasts to learn more. Additionally, we block any adult and/or secured sites from becoming part of our users browsing history.
Our Background
We are a team of impatient individuals who constantly ask ourselves the question, "How can we make things better?" More specifically, we asked ourselves "Why does browsing suck so badly? Why do I end up going to the same sites over and over again? And wouldn't it be nice to have a recommendation engine that actually suggested new, relevant Internet content without us having to explicitly search for it? With the rise of Web 2.0 and with Web 3.0 just over the horizon, and with almost every new application having a social angle to it, we found it ironic that the most fundamental of Web-based behaviors surfing - was still a very, very lonely and inefficient exercise. We wanted to eliminate that feeling of being lost in a remote corner of the Internet, unable to find the cool sites or the interesting people.
With social behavior governing our every activity, we began to envision a way in which browsing could also be a social experience. Wouldn't it be great if Web surfing could be like window-shopping? Our next realization was that sites depending on user-generated content have a fundamental problem: they require their users to take the time to generate content. This is a major limitation. Seriously, how many hours a day can a person spend generating content for all the Web 2.0 sites out there? Not finding any existing solution to fulfill our Web browsing desires, we asked ourselves how we could change all of this and thus was born Kiobo!
By the way, Kiobo is a play on the Spanish phrase "Que hubo?" which means "What's up?" in case you had that burning question.
The Team
Sanjay Tibrewal - Founder / CEO
He is a techy, geeky guy who loves getting his hands dirty with everything new in technology. He recently added a business degree to this techy strain, creating a somewhat volatile mixture of interests and making him impatient to solve the problems that he sees around him. Having spent many years of his life working for corporations of varying sizes, he finds working at startups a liberating experience. His family is very important to him and he tries to spend as much time as he can with them - which is not much in the startup world! He also loves getting into different kinds of sports and is an outdoors-type person. Whenever he can, he tries to go out golfing, camping or skiing or to spend an evening playing poker with his friends. Sanjay was recently the Founder and CEO of Nehron Technologies and has held management-level positions at various technology companies. He has a BE (E&C) from IIT Roorkee, MS (EE) from Boston University and MBA from Wharton.
Pedro Rivas Founder / VP Biz Dev
You'll probably recognize his pink icon on the Kiobo visual interface. Pedro was born and raised in Mexico. After finishing his engineering undergrad degree he became an investment banker (yes, you read that right, an Investment Banker). After 3 years of torture and eating 98% of his meals at his desk, he escaped to Silicon Valley and got his MBA at Stanford University. Since his graduation, he has been toiling away at Apple during the day and working on the development of Kiobo at night. He hopes to get some sleep in 2012.
Luis Ahumada Founder
Luis, like Pedro, was born and raised in Mexico City and followed a similar path, of getting an Engineering degree and an MBA at Stanford. His professional background mostly involves finance and investing, while also serving as an advisor and board member to three leading Mexican firms in the media and telecom industries, with combined annual sales of over $2 Billion USD. As an investor, he is looking to build a career in entrepreneurial opportunities focusing mainly on technology and green initiatives.
Jobs
We are always looking for enthusiastic self starters. Please feel free to send us your resume for any position and we will keep it on the file. Currently we are on the look out for the following positions:
Marketing Communications Manager
We’re looking for an experienced marketing communications professional with Web 2.0 sensibilities and a track record of out-of-the-box marketing innovation.
Responsibilities:
- Coordinate and implement outbound marketing efforts
- Direct the development and content for the Kiobo website
- Coordinate and drive content for the Kiobo blog
- Develop and implement direct marketing campaigns, contests, email newsletters, and other tools to generate demand
Manage the activities of contractors responsible for website development, design, events, printing, and SEO/SEM
Qualifications:
- 5+ years marketing communications experience in a fast-paced, professional, software environment
- Experience directing participation & logistics in industry events, tradeshows, and conferences
- Detail-oriented, with excellent project management skills and a natural desire to track results
- First-class verbal and written communications skills
- Energetic and wants to be engaged in both marketing great software and the larger direction of the company as a whole
- Intelligent and creative with the maturity to respect and use others’ ideas as well as their own
- Highly-motivated, self-starter that is comfortable taking high-level direction and executing
- Independent, creative thinker who can transform ideas into meaningful and useful results
- Thrives in a small team, wears many hats and enjoys great startup environments
- Bachelor’s Degree
If you’re a fit, then please send us an introduction along with your resumé to resume@kiobo.com
