Every individual possesses a personally unique version of what constitutes ‘interesting web content’ and maybe only 1-5 out of 1000 pieces of content fighting for your attention is actually meaningful to you. “Everybody today speaks about an information overload problem and attention crisis but people don’t realize yet that the amount of content that will compete for their attention will likely be 10 times higher 2 years down the road ” says Barak Hachamov, founder and ‘Visionary Geek’ of My6Sense.

I had a chance to sit down with Barak and talk about how My6Sense aides the process of finding personalized online content against the backdrop of information overload.

Social Times) What is My6Sense in a nutshell?

Barak Hachamov) A service that finds the good stuff that you like and don’t want to miss. It personalizes your streams almost like mimicking your unique human ranking function. Much like Pandora offers you a personalized music channel and Netflix offers you personalized movie experiences, My6Sense offers you a hyper personalized stream of content of any kind. The more you use it, the smarter it will be. It will figure out your preferences and pick out the best stuff while being totally effortless. Instead of the user explicitly searching for something on the net, My6Sense implicitly knows and displays what you like.

My6Sense offers true personalization and focuses on not just community preferences. We rely on implicit and relative feedback, carefully derived from user behavior and we do not attempt to explain the preferences, just mimic them.

ST) Is data overload a major problem that people are facing today?

BH) I don’t perceive information overload as a problem. It is an evolving challenge that has been an issue for a long time and is not anything new. Rather, the problem people face lies in surfing and finding content that matters to them. The amount of online content thrown at individuals is only going to increase tenfold in the next 2 years and people need a way to sift through the noise and find what they like.

BH) With tools like My6Sense, this challenge will turn into a great opportunity to bring us the right content at the right time, context and location. It will allow us to discover the hidden insights behind the fiscal and the virtual corner.

ST) The release of My6Sense for Android was in September. How do the iPhone and Android versions differ?

This app was built on our new API. We added lots of enhancements to the Android app. It is more visual, more social, and more intuitive. It has a sleeker and cleaner look with thumbnail images and previews. The experience for the new user is enhanced as we offer easy access points to your top content from Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz as well as your RSS feeds. So far, it’s been extremely popular among Android users and we’re planning to add all the Android enhancements to the iPhone version soon.

ST) How does My6Sense compare to competitors like Flipboard, Paper.li and Hunch?

BH) Competition has been popping up recently, which is a great sign that the market demand for such services is growing rapidly.

Flipboard for example is a very innovative and visually impressive service though it feels more like sifting through a beautiful magazine. I think it would be a great opportunity for us to partner with some of these solutions, to combine our ground breaking personal ranking service via our Attention API.

ST) What are some other developments to My6Sense that you are working on right now?

Firstly, we want to expand the service via our ‘Attention API’. This will allow mobile developers and publishers to touch their users with personalized content.

We will also bring My6Sense to other platforms such as the web, tablets, and add more enhancements to the iPhone version.

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The podcast was probably one of the shortest one ever since Jim was very concise in responding to my questions. Earlier I asked people on Twitter, Plurk and Facebook what questions they would like to have answered and most of them were responded to. One reader asked if the iPhone works with the new MySpace Data Availability service.

While I assumed that the service works with pretty much any web-based technology, Jim confirmed that the new service does indeed work with iPhones. Does this mean we’ll soon see a number of mobile implementations? Probably but I’m not so sure how soon we’ll see this being implemented. I’ve already spoken with a number of mobile services who said that they plan to build software around the new services being offered by Facebook and MySpace.

Check out my interview to with Jim to learn more about the new Data Availability service.

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With this launch, users will be able to make their basic profile, photos and friend networks available to all third-party sites that support the new standard. As described on the MySpace data availability page, the new service uses the OAuth standard for authenticating third-party sites. MySpace will be releasing a video tutorial later today which helps developers begin creating applications.

MySpace will also be providing developers with libraries of simple client side controls so websites with minimal technical expertise will be able to easily leverage MySpace content and data. MySpace is now the first step to open up their public APIs and move toward making the web a more social space. While some have argued that this step creates a larger walled garden, I firmly believe that this is a great step in the right direction.

For those concerned about privacy, users will be provided with a central control panel in MySpace which “allows users to manage how their content and data is made available to third party sites they have chosen to engage with to ensure user content and data stays secure and private.” Additionally, “information will be served dynamically from the MySpace data store to ensure both the most up to date content and this allows users to give and revoke permissions easily and instantaneously.”

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