The Filter: Team Blog

We’ve just slapped up a bit of a refresh to TheFilter.com, and we’d like to run you through why we’ve decided to do this.

When we launched last year, our aim was to be the home of recommendations on the web - so we recommended music and movies to you on your homepage. However, the world/Internet is moving on and there’s lots more content out there than just albums and movies. So, we’ve tweaked our goalposts a bit and now want to filter the whole of the web for you - to find the entertainment (and relevant bits of information related to the entertainment) that you’ll love.

The very first iteration of this process is up now on The Filter. If you log-in you’ll see a feed which contains news stories, reviews and recommendations - all based on your tastes (the items in your taste cloud).

In the coming months we’ll be adding lots and lots of great content to this feed, such as Tweets from your favourite artists/movie stars, the best videos, gig recommendations, concerts from photos - you name it, it will go into your feed. We’ll also be tidying up the design considerably (there’s even rumours that those floor tiles will go soon!)

Anyway, that’s the premise behind the updates to the site today. Please let us know any feedback you may have in the comments.

Hope you enjoy discovering new content in your feed.

Our CEO (or “boss” as the BBC likes to call him) is still at SXSW, and tweeting every five seconds about it. Sample tweets: “Shall I go to the Google or Facebook party tonight?”. He’s even got into the habit of saying “Goodnight” on Twitter, which I think is the invisible line between being a normal person and being a complete geek. He’s crossed it, and there’s no coming back. He’ll probably come back to the office with about ten sickening new buzz words and make us work while perched on space hoppers with a GPS chip built into them.

Despite going to Facebook parties (he thought the band were brilliant, while I noticed that Mike Butcher from Techcrunch thought they were awful) it does appear that he has been doing some work - having a nice chat with the BBC.

Hopefully the video won’t shatter your illusion of SXSW like it did mine, you can take a look here. I expected the whole thing to be super-cool and trendy, with drunk rock stars walking around, but it looks like they are conducting the interview in a school library.

You can read the full BBC article here, featuring David and a host of other British start-ups that joined forces to take on SXSW with the folks at Digital Mission.

We’ve hit the Beeb today, Darren Waters has caught up with our Texas-bound CEO about The Filter’s digital mission at SXSW. We mentioned a while back that we’ve been selected from more than 100 technology enterprises to represent the best of the UK startup community at the interactive conference. Well, it finally starts tomorrow and we’re sure our CEO will be knocking back a few double espressos in preparation for really long days showcasing what The Filter can do. Anyway here’s the BBC blurb on The Filter’s interactive trip:

One of the British firms travelling as part of the Digital Mission is TheFilter.com,  a recommendation engine and website whose backers include musician Peter Gabriel.

David Maher-Roberts, Chief Executive of TheFilter, said small companies were feeling the downturn.

He said “We had to work harder to raise the round of investment we closed last month than it would have been a year ago. And we have to be incredibly careful on costs.”

Mr Maher-Roberts said being part of the Digital Mission would help raise his company’s profile out in the US.

“When you deal with digital entertainment companies in the US they are fairly West Coast-centric and if you are not there you have to stand out from the crowd if they are going to take any notice of you whatsoever.”

The Filter has two sides to its business - a recommendation engine which it licenses to partners, such as Nokia, and a destination website that it uses to showcase its technology and acts as a playground for new features.

“A lot of people are doing music recommendations, it’s a very busy space. A lot fewer doing video and very,very few are doing recommendations across any form of digital entertainment - it’s what makes us unique.”

More than 20 million people use The Filter’s technology every month.

“I’ve seen an absolute change in the last six months when talking to executives in e-commerce or media. They used to think recommendation engines were a nice thing to have for users, now they see it as absolutely essential.”

TheFilter is optimistic about the future, despite the recession.

“Our priorities are to further increase our number of partnerships - we currently have really partners in music and video

“Our main priority is that we will break even in the next six to 12 months so we can put our future in our own hands.”

Don’t forget, if you want to see what The Filter’s doing in Austin, you can follow twitter updates by our CEO at @thefilter or @davidpmr

We’ve news just in, which is helping us get over the fact that Coldplay did not (grr, they were robbed) win Mastercard British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards last night.  Anyway, I won’t bore you with how disappointed I am and get to the point, we’ve formally closed an investment round, which means The Filter’s $1.2 million in the bank.

As well as securing the continued support of current investors Peter Gabriel and Eden Ventures, the business has managed to attract new angel investors, such as Roderick Banner, Chairman of WPP-owned agency, Banner Corp, former CEO of LoudEye Michael Brochu (through EMM Investments) as well as John Taysom, founder of  We7.com and a former investor in, among others, Yahoo and Infoseek.

Our CEO David Maher Roberts comments,

“We are delighted to have closed this investment round - especially as it comes off the back of a successful 2008 for The Filter which saw the launch of TheFilter.com as well as growing revenues from existing and new licensing partnerships. We plan to use the funds to further develop our content filtering service for consumers and to increase the number of businesses that will benefit from our services and expertise in Europe and the US. We have had decent success with partnerships both sides of the Atlantic because our technology works for all media types, delivers measurable results, and is dead easy to implement. The team and I are proud of what has been achieved to date and we are especially proud of having attracted new investors whilst enjoying the continued support of long term investors Peter Gabriel and Eden Ventures. We are in a good position to have a big 2009.”

Glitz, red carpet, golden statuettes (if they haven’t all been stolen), long speeches and a lot of tears, oh yes, The Oscars are just around the corner and already everyone is speculating as to who the winners and losers will be on Hollywood’s biggest night of the year.

Could there be a few surprises? Maybe Fincher’s thought-provoking Curious Case of Benjamin Button will end up whipping the bookmaker’s favourite Slumdog Millionaire? Who’ll blubber the most? oh god, please not another wimpering Winslet performance. Anyway as we’re getting into an Oscar frenzy we thought we’d give you The Filter’s top tips for the 81st Annual Academy Awards:

Best Picture

Slumdog Millionaire

Certainly an enjoyable cinema treat, low budget and beautifully shot, this inspirational drama unfolds the story of a poor orphans epic journey to winning 29 million rupee.  This stunning modern day Indian fairytale will inevitably strike gold.

Best Actor

Mickey Rourke

Down and out star Mickey Rourke who almost became invisible on the Hollywood circuit appears to be a force to be reckoned  with,  given his grand comeback as Randy “The Ram” Robinson. An Oscar win for Mickey would definitely mirror the glorious story of The Wrestler.

Best Actress

Kate Winslet

2009 appears to be the year that Kate Winslet will finally get her hands on the best actress award for her outstanding emotional performance in the post Holocaust drama, The Reader.

Supporting Actor

Heath Ledger

It would be brilliant to see Heath Ledger, who tragically died last year to be awarded a golden trophy given that only one actor has managed to achieve this feat from the grave. His psychotic and thoroughly disturbing role as the iconic Joker in The Dark Knight without a doubt deserves recognition from the movie community.

Supporting Actress

Taraji P Henson

Taraji should get acknowledgement for her powerful acting as Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which tells the haunting story of a man who ages backwards.

Also we’ve just time to wish good luck to our supporter Peter Gabriel, who is nominated for the best original song “Down to Earth,” which appeared on the movie WALL-E. We’ve crossed our fingers and toes.

Okay, Okay, Okay. Snow has hit the British Isles and the whole country has gone hysterical, simply unable to cope with a weather condition that isn’t rain, wind or the dreaded rain+wind combo fusion. The Filter office is not excluded in the mass-hysteria, and I’m sorry to have to report that basically all of the development team - including the CEO have run home - terrified that the snow will render the roads useless and that they’ll have to spend the night digging in the ground for nutritious fresh plant shoots.

I’d like to add that the snow hasn’t really started to settle properly here in Bath - I even went outside to try and take a picture of the office building to try and prove that it was snowing - but to be honest you couldn’t actually see any snow when I took the picture. So, I had to steal a picture from The Gruaniad.

Here’s a playlist/random-bunch-of-songs-about-snow that I threw together to celebrate the fact that it isn’t rainy or windy.

The Twilight Sad - Cold Days From The Birdhouse
Mirah - Cold Cold Water
Elbow - Snowball
Animal Collective - Winters Love
Aloha - Ice Storming
Damien Rice - Cold Water
The Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
Shearwater - The Snow Leopard
Scott Walker - White Winter Nights
Death Cab For Cutie - The Ice Is Getting Thinner

According to Mathematician’s, today is the most depressing day of the year. It’s Monday. You’ve broken all of your new years resolutions. It’s a billion years from Pay Day. U2 are about to release a new album.

The press have dubbed it Blue Monday, which I would find amusing/clever were it not for my hugely depressed state.

So, firstly, congratulations to all of our readers to making it through to 11 AM on the most depressing day of the year without breaking open ten packets of paracetamol with shaking hands.

I was going to post a list of happy, joyous songs to help us break out of our collective lull - but to be honest, I’m too depressed. What does sunshine look like? What do puppies smell like? When will Bono stop singing?

Being a bit of a math’s wizard myself, I formulated an equation to dive through the entire catalogue of recorded music since 1956 to pick out the ten most depressing songs ever written, by anyone, ever.

Here’s the results:

1. Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday
2. Morrissey - I Know Very Well How I Got My Name
3. Morrissey - Boxers
4. Morrissey - Dial A Cliche
5. Morrissey - We’ll Let You Know
6. Morrissey - I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty
7. Morrissey - Dear God Please Help Me
8. Morrissey - Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together
9. Morrissey - I Am Hated For Loving
10. Morrissey - Seasick, Yet Still Docked.

My coffee’s also gone cold.

So, the world’s worst mobile telecoms network (it took them about three months to give me my PAC code so that I could move to o2 and get an iPhone, the inept fools) have announced the nominees for this years Rising Star awards. Last year it was won by Shia LaBeuf, who ruined my life last year with the ultra depressing ‘Into The Wild’; a movie that made me want to give my life savings (about 28p) to Oxfam and run away to Scotland where I could be eaten by wild dogs, I’ve only just been able to get over it…

This years nominees are Michael Cera, someone who probably is a star already after playing high profile roles in Juno and Superbad. He will clearly win it, as he is the only actor that most people will have heard of. I’d urge you to look further, as the Orange Bafta website shows that all the other actors have some degree of beard/facial hair (except for the lady) - so can probably method act.

Then there’s Toby Kebbell, who has an amusing surname. He played Anthony, Paddy Constantine’s brother in the absolutely awesome Dead Man’s Shoes a few years back. Again, I’d urge you not to vote for him because he’s going to be starring in a romantic drama directed by Stephen Frears with Michelle Phiffer as the lead role. It’s not the 90’s any more, i think he should stick to playing dead people in gratuitously violent films. It could be a whole new genre.

Then, there’s two actors that have been in either Causalty or Holby City. I have a personal vendetta against these programs. If you haven’t seen them they are British soaps set in hospitals, basically the low-budget UK equivalent of ER. I don’t like these programs because they show operations and blood and death and guts and it makes me feel sick and unmanly because I have to close my eyes during these scenes. These actors are Michael Fassbender (hopefully pronounced Face-Bender) and Noel Clarke.

Finally, there’s Rebecca Hall - I haven’t seen any of her new films, but she was in Frost/Nixon… but not as David Frost. The Daily Telegraph thinks she’s “Wonderful”, “Excellent” and “Engaging”. But then, The Daily Telegraph has also been giving lots of coverage to the idea that a UFO has hit a windturbine.

So, that’s a thorough analysis of these years contestants. You are now qualified to go and vote (and thus win things) at http://bafta.orange.co.uk - but remember that this is the careers of talented actors that you’re dealing with, so don’t just vote based on who has got the funniest surname, who has the best facial hair, or whether or not they’ve been in low budget UK TV shows that you don’t like.

Lucky us, we’ve been selected from over 100 entries to attend Digital Mission, a sort of trade mission comprised of the UK’s digital talent. It’s more exciting than it sounds because they are actually flying our representative to Austin, Texas to attend the South by South West Interactive conference, which if you don’t know is an event that showcases hundreds of music acts from around the globe. Unlucky is it’s our CEO who gets to go to Texas, the worst music offender in the office. So while he’s busy doing networking things, here’s a few music acts we’re very sad we’ll be missing.

White Lies - This dark rock band is tipped to do great things in 2009 by NME.

Ra Ra Riot - A personal favourite of mine, fresh indie-pop tunes from a band a bit like Vampire Weekend.

Ida Maria - I bet this Norwegian Bjork will be a cracking live act.

LA Riots - Wishing we were in SXSW tearing up the dance floor to this duo.

Primal Scream - a classic headliner, the band of my youth.

Happy New Year!

We’re back in the office today, the team here are all drinking dangerous levels of coffee to push themselves through the day and make The Filter the ultimate destination for entertainment discovery in 2009. We’re all rocking out to the new full track radio stations that we’ve managed to blag from our friends at We7. Just go onto any artist page (such as the undeniably awesome Bill Wither’s) and click the gigantic “Start Artist Radio” button to get your own personalized music stream.

There were some interesting stats produced today in USA Today, which looks at how 2008 was a record year for the music industry. It sold more tracks than ever before, a whopping 1.5 billion tracks - but of course, album sales were down by another 14% from 2007. And this is traditionally the industry’s big earner.

In many ways the Industry should be thankful that the downturn is happening now, rather than a few years ago. While a few labels and distributers have gone under (as well as a few music stores) things could have been a lot worse in the dismal years at the start of the decade. Many companies made massive job cuts then and started to readdress business models, so hopefully we wont see Paul McCartney busking again.

Obviously, at The Filter we’ve been feeling the power of the album drift slowly away for a long time. We’ve had thousands of users preferring to make playlists daily with our Mac and PC software rather than listen to that Prog Rock triple album, so I was a little surprised that the decline wasn’t greater than 14%.

Anyway, if you’re looking for some song recommendations today - I think you should try out our Taste Mixer, if you haven’t already. Simply head over to a profile page (here’s our CEO’s - apologies for his dreadful taste in music) You can mix your music taste with his to get song recommendations of things that you’d both like - and you can then listen to a radio station of full tracks. Give it a go, and let me know what you think in the comments.