Filtrbox is a new service that grew out of a need I can understand. Last week, I spoke with Ari Newman, their founder and President. Ari has been involved with startups for 12 years in both technical and business roles. Like many of us, he found it hard to keep up with everything on the Web. There was nothing between Google Alerts and the expensive business intelligence software. I can appreciate this. While the Google guys are smart, I have discovered many new personal accomplishments through Google Alerts such composing music, being involved in films, and other such talents I did not know I had or activities that I do not remember taking part in. Ari wanted to address this need with a media monitoring system that was not a big ticket item. Their primary focus is the small to mid-size business market but they also have individual users in large firms like Microsoft and Reuters.

It works like this. Filtrbox acts as an intelligent agent, searching for new articles and content allowing users to better understand what is going on in the Web. Filtrbox achieves this using its FiltrRank technology, which gives users sensitivity, scoring and relevance controls over incoming information. Users create custom “Filtrs” that track company names, terms, people and any other specific online information they might be looking for from mainstream media, blogs, RSS feeds, or social media sources. They can even look at Twitter and FriendFeed, perhaps that will get me to selectively sample Twitter in response to those who keep encouraging me to join it. On the other hand, you can also block sources. Filtrbox delivers a Daily Briefing report via email that summarizes key new articles matching the user’s Filtrs. Once the data is collected, subscribers can share results with peers, analyze trends, and generate custom RSS feeds. This allows Filtrbox to be both a personal productivity tool and a collaboration vehicle. Here is a screen shot of a Filtrbox dashboard.

You can construct Filtrs with single words or strings. You can also exclude words. For example, you might want to follow Apple iPhone and Leopard but exclude Apple TV. Daily briefings are provided and can look for spikes in activity around your Filtrs. Filtrbox does ranking and you can adjust the ranking level you want to see to keep the responses down. Filtrbox looks at how you adjust rankings and learns your preferences better over time. They keep 15 days of history and flush out responses unless you name them as favorites. This is a good idea or your responses could get cluttered quickly. Here is a screen shot of Filtrbox reporting on the buzz around a Filtr.

You can search existing content and create an RSS feed on Filtrs. You can even put a Filtrbox feed as a side bar item in your blog. In this case, you will see a steam of relevant titles and summaries. Then you can click on the title to see the rest of the content. It opens a new window so your blog also remains in view.

Filtrbox was founded in Boulder, Colorado in April 2007 and is backed by Flywheel Ventures, True Ventures, and some angel investors. They ran a private Beta from February to June of this year. Now this week, they have announced their first public release. A survey of their Beta users reported that more than 80 percent of respondents found the service more valuable than existing tools, with more than half of those respondents coming from executive management or sales and marketing roles at their companies.

You can get five Filtrs for free but they are counting on the people’s inability to stop there once they see Filtrbox in action. You pay once you want more than five. They claim it is both disruptive and addictive. I am going to give it a try and see if I can resist.