"We want to do one thing and do it well," says Utopic CEO and co-founder Jüri Kaljundi. "That one thing is to find good and interesting content via friends and social circles."
Utopic, released in public beta two weeks ago, sits on the same social swing set with iPad app Flipboard, already a popular kid on the playground, and the Facebook newspaper PostPost. Its offering is mostly web-based and delivers on the single purpose promise by surfacing trending and relevant music, video and photos from a user's Twitter, Facebook and YouTube connections.
New users need only connect their social accounts, and Utopic will highlight the hottest hits in a visually pleasing content montage. Users can check out popular photos, watch trending YouTube videos or listen to tracks, and sort by content type for a filtered look at what their friends are sharing and talking about. The experience also allows the user to like, favorite and share content on Facebook and Twitter.
Utopic is a self-learning system that learns from the user's activity, considers what friends and friends of friends are sharing and posting, and even factors in global trends to create an elastic experience that evolves with time.
The self-learning and backend data capture and analysis features are what Kaljundi believes set Utopic apart from the competition. "Utopic is not just a UI play," he says. "Even for just 1,000 users, we have collected more than 3 million links they and their friends have shared, retweeted or liked. This can open interesting possibilities in the future for trend analysis."
Trend analysis factors into the startup's future plans. Utopic, which Kaljundi assures me is more than just a hobby project, has raised a small amount of funding -- $70,000 to be exact -- from a few European angels. Notably, Skype's founding engineer Ahti Heinla is one of them.