Apture makes it easier than ever before for us to explore our curiosity in context.  With Apture’s frictionless search we can learn more about a topic through photos, videos, maps, and more without ever leaving the page.  And now with Hotspots we can reach the information we want even faster.

Each time we click on a Hotspot, or a highlight a topic we are paving a path to our interests.  Let’s follow the trail and take a look at the topics that have captured our collective curiosity these past couple months.

It has been an eventful few months, from the death of Osama Bin Laden to multiple high-profile marital scandals (Anthony and Arnold, you know who you are).  But this is just scratching the surface of our curiosity–let’s venture deeper.

Curiosity stretches beyond the headline

News surrounding extra-marital scandals, for example, generates significant curiosity around the spouse and others involved. Maria Shriver, wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Huma Abedin, wife of Anthony Weiner, both attracted a great deal of attention around the times of their respective husband’s scandals. (Huma Abedin attracted even more curiosity than her husband!)  In June, we also see Lisa Weiss and Ginger Lee, who are connected to the Anthony Weiner scandal, become the subjects of significant interest.  While articles often include background information on the person directly involved, we are curious to know more about the others affected.

Curiosity comes ahead of the news

Curiosity comes along with rumors—before the news fully drops.  For instance, buzz surrounding Osama Bin Laden begins on May 1^st, as soon as the very first blog posts and tweets began to hint that something had happened.  (Interest in Osama Bin Laden then skyrockets on May 2^nd when further news was released.)  Similarly, Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner both begin to capture attention in late-May, well before the Anthony Weiner scandal reached its apex.

Curiosity rises and falls at different rates for every topic

We all know that some news stories generate immediate and concentrated curiosity, whereas other stories spill into the public mind more gradually.  The stories with staying power though, are not always the ones you might expect!  While it’s no surprise that Osama Bin Laden attracted a great deal of attention upon his assassination, it is notable that interest quickly waned.  In contrast, Harold Camping, who predicted that May 21^st 2011 would mark the end of the world, drew a great deal of attention throughout the month May.

Curiosity evolves

When we first meet a character in the news, we need background information and basic facts; however, over time if we are still curious it is because we want to get below the surface.  Let’s take the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) story as an example.  When this story first broke many readers knew little about DSK and we see that they wanted background information or related news.   As the days go on though, readers who are still curious want to see videos and other rich media-types.

Hotspots: Trail markers to curiosity

Now with Hotspots, we can look on any page with Apture and see curiosity in context. After a few of us express our curiosity by highlighting a term and engaging with the results, Apture automatically creates a link.  These can be thought of as trail markers left behind by others who have already explored this interest path.  As the trend fades, so too will the trail marker.

In the coming weeks, Apture will release an analytics dashboard to give Apture bloggers and publishers a map of the curiosity paths explored in the context of their own sites.   Stay tuned!

“Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
- Donald O. Hebb, father of the idea of neural networks

I’m really excited to announce something that Apture’s been working towards for three years… but first, let’s start with a big idea.

The Web as a Connected Brain

A synapse in the brain

Imagine the web is one big global brain: every page is a neuron (it holds information), and every link is a synapse that connects pages together. Every day we use the web, we make it smarter. When we click a link, we’re thickening and strengthening the connections between two pages. And every time we create a link, we’re teaching the web an idea. And just like the brain, it’s not the pages that make the web powerful, it’s the connections.

But there are many pages on the web where those synapses are *missing*, so that when you do want to learn more about [subject X] on the page, you’re on your own to make the connection – probably through a search box – yourself.

Today, Apture is changing all that.

Enter Apture Hotspots: The Missing Link

Apture Hotspots is a new feature that automatically creates new links (synapses!) to information based on what readers want to know. It works like this:

• You add Apture’s one line of code to your site and enable Hotspots
• Apture tracks the “missing links” by identifying which topics cause visitors to ‘leak’ out to Google (we’ll know when a phrase is highlighted & copied into Google).
• If a topic is highlighted and engaged with frequently, Apture automatically converts it into a Hotspot.
• Every user thereafter who visits the page can click the Hotspot to instantly access related information without leaving the page.

For example, if five people come to this page and want to learn about “Grand Canyon” then that term automatically converts into a Hotspot (go ahead and click on it to give it a shot!). Or imagine you wanted to know about Somali Giraffe, or Ashton Kutcher. After a few people engage with that topic, it just turns into a Hotspot.

When you see the web rewrite itself like this, it’s kind of like magic. Every time we search, we’re effectively teaching the web that a synapse is missing, and Apture fills it in.

Just as in the the brain, the more times a synapse fires between two neurons, the stronger the connection gets. In Apture, the more times users search a topic, the more we strengthen the page’s connection to information, and the less frequently a Hotspot is used, the more it fades over time.

In essence, by crowd-sourcing thousands of new synapses into the web from real user curiosity, we will make the web smarter and faster to navigate.

Make your site as addictive as Wikipedia or Facebook: Join the beta

We want the whole web to be as rich and interconnected as the most engaging sites on the web like Wikipedia or Facebook. On those sites, everything you want to know about is already cross-referenced and linked together. You don’t browse Wikipedia because the articles are better than other encyclopedia sites, you go there because when you want more information – boom – it’s already linked for you. Facebook does the same thing by connecting every person, interest, event, and photo together, making the site infinitely browseable. Now Hotspots is making the remaining 99.9% of the web just as ‘connected’ by giving publishers the power to fill in the missing links.

Today, hundreds of publishers will go live with Hotspots, including top sites like ScientificAmerican.com so head on over and check it out. We’re also going to be giving access to publishers who sign up today, so you should click below to sign up:.

Join the Hotspots beta now

Or if you don’t have a website, download Apture browser extension to take Apture with you on every page and see Hotspots where other users have searched for more information. We’ll gradually roll out Hotspots to all our browser extension users on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE over the next few weeks.

Big picture: making curiosity “viral”

Our mission here at Apture is to discover your sparks of curiosity and satisfy them with full learning experiences.  With Apture Hotspots we’re taking that to the next level by making curiosity itself go “viral.” Each time one person is curious about something, Apture Hotspots will spread that curiosity to thousands of others.

If you share our dream of enriching the world’s information and rewiring the web, help us spread the word:

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We are excited to announce that Apture has integrated with a new partner, CloudFlare.
CloudFlare “supercharges” websites making them faster and more secure. Now, all CloudFlare
customers (representing over 3.5B PVs a month, and growing) can activate Apture Highlights on
their site with one click. By simply selecting “ON” from within the CloudFlare dashbaord,CloudFlare
customers can enjoy the visitor retention and automatic content enhancement benefits of Apture – no
codes or template modifications needed.

You can see Apture on Cloudflare here http://www.cloudflare.com/apps/apture

Users of Cloudflare are already really excited about this