Hands on: Strands, a lifestream with a brain
Strands, on the other hand, takes a few steps forward by allowing users to filter for different types of content. More interestingly, the company is also using some of its discovery and recommendation technology to suggest popular content from across the network and help people make connections. [September 18^th, 2008]

BBVA: the first Bank 2.0
I've blogged lots about social networks, social media, Web 2.0, blogs, mobile banking, mobile payments, internet banking and more. My continual gripe has been: where is the Bank 2.0? I've been talking about it, but I've never seen one. Today, I saw the first Bank 2.0. It's BBVA... Personalistion with total customisation, recommendation engines, comparison tools, aggregation, financial widgets, cross-platform and device neutral for both internet and mobile access, and more. Brilliant. [The Finanser, July 24^th, 2008]

Strands Launches Updated Friend Recommendations Service
The new service seems similar to Valley-darling FriendFeed but takes the good part of FF one step further. Strands is offering a service that not only aggregates your friends social profiles, but also offers "tastes"... I've written many times about how important discovery is for Web sites and blogs and now Strands is pushing discovery into individuals lifestreams. [CenterNetworks, May 28^th, 2008]

How to Use Data Portability Profiles
Social discovery for personal recommendations, broken down into two main areas: placing Strands' Recommender on top of users' life streams, and enabling data portability integration. [Mashable, May 28^th, 2008]

Strands Absorbs Another Personal Finance Company
Just over two weeks ago Strands acquired Expensr, and now the company is announcing its acquisition of NetworthIQ. Both are personal finance applications that Strands wanted mostly for their human capital, but also for some of their technology assets. [Techcrunch, May 15^th, 2008]

Strands Expands Further With NetworthIQ Buy
With the acquisition of NetworthIQ, Corvallis, Ore.-based Strands is looking to further build its moneyStrands personal finance application by giving users quality recommendations based on their entire financial portfolio. [Gigaom, May 15^th, 2008]

MyStrands Social Player 3.1 Released; Scrobbling, new Player UI, Java App
What was likely already the best music player / recommendation service available, MyStrands Social Player, has just received a major revision and trust us when we tell you, you can't get it installed soon enough. [The Boy Genius Report, April 29^th, 2008]

New MyStrands Social Player adds scrobbling support for S60 and S40 devices
With this latest mobile client you can now scrobble tracks to Last.fm. Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile. This data is used to organize and recommend songs, create personalized radio stations, and more. [ZDNet, April 29^th, 2008]

Strands Acquires Expensr, Launches moneyStrands
In the first real sign that recommendation engine Strands (formally MyStrands) is branching out from mobile and music, the company has announced the acquisition of Expensr, an online personal finance application. Strands is also launching moneyStrands, a personal money management solution. We've noted before that Strands is a company to watch, having taken $55m in funding so far and using it to develop a broad range of recommendation technologies. [Read Write Web, April 29^th, 2008]

MyStrands Scrobbles Last.fm for Mobile Users
In providing scrobbling for Last.fm accounts, MyStrands bridges the gap between its own service, mobile devices, and Last.fm users, which can then broadcast listening activity and recommendations far beyond the realms of these three options. [Mashable, April 28^th, 2008]

MyStrands hosts contest for the 'co-opetition'
Venture-backed social recommendation technology developer MyStrands Inc. is ... offering seed investment to the best early-stage startup or project in the field of online endorsements as part of a peer-reviewed contest in conjunction with the industry's annual conference. [Tech Confidential, March 14^th, 2008]

MyStrands Adds $24 Million to Series B
Founded in 2003, MyStrands has developed a social recommender engine designed to provide personalized recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices." [The New York Times, December 5^th, 2007]

Recommendation Engine MyStrands Expands War Chest to $55m to Go Beyond Music
In a world at risk of information overload, where the line between content producers and consumers is no longer clear and where the pace of everyday life is increasing rapidly - I'd say the recommendation engine business is a very smart one to be in. There is ample precedent and this startup is moving into a relatively established field. Richard MacManus lauded the company's previous multi-million dollar investment and our enthusiasm here for this project continues. [Read/WriteWeb, December 4^th, 2007]

MyStrands Gets Funding & Sharpens Focus; Is Recommendation Ready For Primetime?
Spanish-American recommendation engine provider MyStrands announced a $25 million funding deal. But the news is not is not so much the money; it?s more the increasing realization that mobile search alone may not be enough. In their quest to match the right content to the right users mobile operators and media companies are looking to recommendation engines to deliver content suggestions with a personal touch. [MSEARCH Groove, June 18^th, 2007]

MyStrands Gets $25M
MyStrands, the Corvallis, Oregon-based media recommendation service, on Monday said it had snagged $25 million from a group of Spanish investors, in a second round of funding. That comes less than a month after CBS bought music recommendation engine Last.fm for $280 million and eBay purchased socialized search recommendation service StumbleUpon for $75 million. [Red Herring, June 18^th, 2007]

MyStrands gets funding boost
American-Spanish social networking website MyStrands announced a $25m (£12.6m) funding deal today to develop its recommendation technologies.
Science and telecoms specialists Debaeque Venture Capital and technology research firm Sequel R&D have invested in MyStrands, a four-year-old company currently focused on developing and researching recommendation tools around music. [Guardian Unlimited, June 18^th, 2007]

Music brings people together through MyStrands Social Player
The application also helps friends keep in contact because it tells users what their friends are listening to at every moment and shows their play history from their phones or computers. Social Player users can interact with them and discover music through them. [S60 Newsletter, April 16^th, 2007]

MyStrands Social Music Player brings community and music discovery to mobile
MyStrands is hot... because of its recommendation and "find similar" features... The "mefirst" early adopter market is the driver of mobile. Not only do they own and have the latest device they actively use it to "show-off" or carve their own personal niche via mobile. The fact that the community aspect is added and users can see and connect with people that purchased similar will surely have a viral effect. [Gomo News, March 15^th, 2007]

Digital technology of partyStrands links real and virtual world partying
How do technophiles fall in love? If a Corvallis company has anything to say about it, the answer could be partyStrands, the latest product from MyStrands, a local firm that uses patented algorithms to help online subscribers find music they'll like. [USA Today, January 29^th, 2007]

MyStrands Revamp - More Integration Between Mobile, Online and Physical Worlds
Better integration between the online, mobile and physical worlds; excellent new mobile features including a mobile Web portal and personalized radio station; new navigation on the site; and a personal version of partyStrands, their service for party organizers, bars, clubs and DJs... Probably the best part of all this is the increased ability for users to find music and network with their friends via their mobile phones. This really is showing the way for online-mobile-offline integration, so congratulations to MyStrands for ramping it up. [Read/WriteWeb, January 23^rd, 2007]

Search for a hero: the next google for 2007
MyStrands, which has focused primarily on the online space, has recently demonstrated MyStrands for Windows mobile devices with launches for other phones to follow soon. [MusicAlly, December, 2006]

SMS gets the party dancing
US-Spanish start-up company myStrands is bringing online and physical communities together with partyStrands. The interactive music service for bars, clubs and private parties lets guests influence the music they hear by sending an SMS. [Ericsson Mobility World Kam Newsletter, December, 2006]

You'are sooooooooo predictable: Hunting the next google
...There is a sense among the players in the recommendation industry -from newcomers like MyStrands and StumbleUpon to titans like Yahoo and Sun- that now is the time to perfect such algorithm. The web, they say, is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. What is the difference? Search is what you do when you are searching for something. Discovery is when someting wonderful that you didn't know existed, or didn't know how to ask for, finds you"... [Fortune, November, 2006]

And If You Liked The Movie, a Netflix Contest May Reward You Handsomely
Francisco Martin, the chief executive of Mystrands.com, a company in Corvallis, Ore., that is developing a recommendation engine based on what people listen to on iTunes, agreed, saying, "With ratings-based systems, you need to rate everything you see in order to get reasonably accurate recommendations." [The New York Times, October 2^nd, 2006]

MyStrands Adds Music to Web 2.0's Mix
MyStrands has created a service for bars and nightclubs, called PartyStrands, that allows patrons to "influence" what music is played via text messages they send to a screen from their cell phones. The service also feeds the information to a Web site that shows what's happening in real time at the club. Martin has dubbed this technology -which is currently available at clubs in New York, Corvallis, and Gandia, Spain-"social programming." [BusinessWeek, September 11^th, 2006]

The New Tastemakers
Personalized recommendation services like MyStrands are already building a presence on hand-held mobile devices... MyStrands, based in Corvallis, Ore., plans to allow fans to influence the music played at nightclubs equipped with its new application. The system, currently being tested at a handful of outlets like DoHwa, a Korean restaurant in the West Village, lets patrons send a text message to a screen, identifying their favorite artist. The screen displays album artwork from the selected artist and the name of the fan who entered it... "Instead of trying to personalize a stream of music to one person, what we're trying to do is create a sequence of music that a group of people can be liking," said Francisco Martin, MyStrands' chief executive. [The New York Times, September 3^th, 2006]

Geezer-Pleasers
Everytime you play a song on your computer, MyStrands instantly digs into its "matrix of associated songs" and suggests a few other tunes that maye not be in your music library, or even on your musical radar screen. "This is really a great moment, a wonderful time to learn about music". [Newsweek, July 11^th, 2006]

Atakan Cetinsoy, MusicStrands: recommendation is the new search
It should come as no surprise that recommendation and discovery technologies are becoming necessary in a society that consumes ever increasing amounts of music and media in a digital form. [MusicAlly, June 29^th, 2006]

New Music to Your Ears
A different philosophy underpins MusicStrands' strategy for recommending songs to its users: The Corvallis, Ore., start-up believes that the tunes users play more accurately capture their tastes than the ones they purchase... The more often songs appear together on playlists, the stronger the association between them. [The Wall Street Journal, June 19^th, 2006]

And the Winner Is...
MusicStrands awarded best in "Listen" category, at Under the Radar Conference (Mountain View, California) [Under the Radar, June 14^th, 2006]

The End User: Finding your tunes
"Soon we are going to have all the content in the universe available to us at any time... That's going to provoke paralysis. And it's impossible that 'experts' would know all your possible tastes. The mobile industry, the hardware device industry, the search industry - they're all trying to understand each of us... We might well be living through the birth of a new industry." [International Herald Tribune, June 7^th, 2006]

Microsoft to Announce Ventures in Europe
MyStrands ... among the Internet and software companies featuring the latest wave of innovations. [The New York Times, June 5^th, 2006]

The Wireless Future
The next phase of the mobile revolution is about to begin, thanks to high-speed networks, smast applications, and a new generation of portable gadgets. We're on the cusp of a dramatic transformation that will extend far beyond the mere ability to download e-mail, photos, and webpages more quickly.... get an advance look at some of the technologies that promise to make this new era of mobility truly revolutionary. As high speed wireless networks become ubiquitous, portable devices will become an essential way to stay connected to friends, family and shared experiences. Call it the "mobile you"- a personalized set of social and enterteinment services that will be available anytime, anyplace... the most compelling content may come from users themselves... Companies to Watch: MusicStrands. [Business 2.0, May 22^nd, 2006]