We are happy to announce that Strands Social Recommender™ is now powering personalized product recommendations at DollarDays, the online wholesaler and closeout company that hosts a Web-based virtual warehouse at www.dollardays.com.

Business owners and charities shop at DollarDays to find deals on small business-sized orders for more than 30,000 consumer products–from toys and household décor to apparel, electronics and seasonal merchandise.

Strands will also offer a free 30-day trial of Strands Social Recommender™ to DollarDays’ 1.1 million retail customers/members.  Starting October 1st, members will be able to trial the same recommendation and personalization technology powering www.dollardays.com without any setup fees and implementation costs.

DollarDays adds 900 new members each day that include a variety of retailers from convenience stores, medium-sized brick & mortar retailers, shopping mall kiosk companies, discount stores, seasonal shops to large established companies.

Strands Social Recommender™ is a SaaS plug-and-play recommendation engine that can be easily and quickly installed by eCommerce and Media Web sites. The Strands Social Recommender can be installed through the Strands API or by adding personalization widgets to a retailer’s site, and can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes.

We are thrilled to be working with Dollar Days and its network of members!

We are happy to announce today that Strands will be powering the online personal finance tool that BBVA, one of the world’s largest retail banks, will be offering its customers (see BBVA press release here).

Developed by BBVA and Strands, BBVA Tú cuentas (You count, in Spanish) is an innovative personal finance tool that allows online users to manage their personal finances better, offering friendly analysis tools to better understand spending and savings. A 100% customizable interface, personalized suggestions, and versions for the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia phones are some of the unique characteristics of BBVA Tú cuentas, being offered to BBVA customers.

BBVA has 4.1 million online customers performing over 1.3 billion annual online transactions. Strands Social Recommender, a key component in the solution, will help BBVA better understand its customers’ needs and behavior, offering them personalized suggestions of financial and non-financial products.

BBVA Tú cuentas is launched today in private beta with the following features:

- Analysis of personal financial information. BBVA Tú cuentas displays a graphical representation of the customers’ financial health, break-down of their income and expenses, as well as their evolution through time. Charts help customers better understand their finances and see whether they have done better or worse than planned over time.

- Categorization of transactions. BBVA Tú cuentas organizes all transactions into a series of categories, and customers can also use personal tags if they prefer them. Having data well organized can help customers make better financial decisions.

- Comparison tools. Customers can tag themselves and BBVA Tú cuentas will compare them to similar customers. Offering meaningful comparisons with similar customers will help people better understand their personal finances and put them into context.

- Budget Goals. BBVA customers can set up their budget and keep their spending within the limits of what they can realistically afford. Additionally, they can choose to be notified if they happen to go over their set budget.

- Alerts. Customers can configure their own financial alerts and BBVA Tú cuentas will notify clients whenever they cross predefined limits. To round things off, customers can also combine these Alerts with their Budget Goals.

- Just for me. The collective knowledge of BBVA user base allows for BBVA Tú cuentas to offer an automatic selection of personalized suggestions for customers to make better decisions. (1) Practical financial and consumer tips to inform customers before they make money choices; (2) short list of most liked products matching each customer spending patterns; (3) financial products and services that may better address customer needs; (4) relevant facts and insightful aggregate stats based on community behavior.

- Aggregation of accounts. BBVA Tú cuentas allows BBVA clients to keep all of their financial data conveniently in one place. In addition to aggregating their BBVA accounts, customers can automatically add any other bank and utility accounts they may have.

Other key characteristics of the Strands personal finance solution are:

1.- A powerful widget platform enables maximum customization with minimum set-up time. Each of our 20 widgets is a little application that performs a specific feature. Clients can personalize each tab with the widgets they choose, to view the content they need.

2.- Powered by Strands Social Recommender, BBVA Tú cuentas provides users with the best personalized suggestions possible, helping them find new ways to save money and invest.

3.- It comes with tailored versions for Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia (S60) browsers, so that the service can be used on mobile devices just as easily as it can be used on computers.

BBVA is a financial services group with more than $783 billion in total assets, 42 million customers in 40 countries and a market capitalization of approximately $85 billion.

We are thrilled to be working with them in this amazing solution!

We are glad to announce today the launch of the Strands Social Recommender™, a SaaS plug-and-play recommendation engine that can be easily and quickly installed by eCommerce and Media Web sites. We will be demonstrating the service at the Internet Retailer 2008 Conference and Exhibition in Chicago this week, let us know if you are going to be there.

The Strands Social Recommender has been proven to increase online sales by up to 35%, by offering site visitors personalized recommendations of new products and content that they might like, in real time.

The Strands Social Recommender can be easily installed through the Strands API or by adding personalization widgets to a retailer’s site, and can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes. More than 100 online businesses have piloted the Strands Social Recommender, with many customers seeing a significant increase in sales.

Key features of the Strands Social Recommender include:

• Cross-product flexibility: Recommendations can be generated across multiple product lines and data models, enabling sites to scale across diverse product, content and service categories.

• Personalized emails: Online businesses can opt-in to offer personalized product and content recommendations via multiple marketing channels, including email.

• Discovery widgets: Businesses can present content, merchandise, and services to users via fully customizable widgets

• Reporting: Business Intelligence reports and visualization tools complement standard Web site analytics to measure the performance of each recommendation. This includes conversion rates, click through rates, and session lift.

The Strands Social Recommender delivers relevant product suggestions to first-time users, as well as offering filtered, personalized results over time to returning customers. These personalized recommendations are based on an individual’s taste profile, but don’t involve asking the user to rate content or build a profile on each site. No personal data is ever exchanged and each user’s interaction remains anonymous and secure.

As we noted above, we will be demonstrating the Strands Social Recommender at the Internet Retailer 2008 Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, today through June 12 at booth # 1216, let us know if you are going to be there.