Muffy: an information service provider that differs from the rest

Vietnam Consumer Electronics World Expo 2009 sucked in many ways, except for the sexy & filthy PGs that caused subtaintial distractions to the audience. However, a fascinating stuff that my friend’s company – Defide Inc. – was demoing at the event really saved my day.

Muffy. A widget that works on both blogging and mobile platforms. It’s a very simple but powerful concept. And in this post I’ll be walking you through the basic feature of the Muffy. A picture is worth a thousand words, agreed?

Muffy is a new information service provider

The screenshot on the right is the interface of the widget. It’s designed using Flash. In fact, all Defide Inc.’s products are done with Flash technologies.

Say you want to know what’s the weather like, it’s just one click away from the front page.

Muffy Weather Widget

Here’s the difference. Instead of fetching weather data from a forecasting service, Muffy takes advantage of the so-called “real-time and user-generated weather”. If A sees that it’s sunny, he’ll vote for “Sunny”. So the more vote Sunny has, the more reliable the result. As a result, what you see on the screen is a real version of the weather, whose status is reported by Muffy users. You get the idea.

Or if you’re looking for something that’s HOT.

Muffy Hot Topics

I want to be what’s the hottest drink out there, here’s what I get:

Muffy Hottest Drinks

If I don’t think Aquafina is hot, I vote it down, and vote something else up. In the end you get the most generally agreed hottest drink.

Maybe Pepsi thinks it’s a good idea to sponsor some ads here.

Muffy Aquafina

But it’s very targeted and implicit. The ads are not forced into the users’ throat by any means.

And it can be fun too!

Muffy Fun Topics

If you’re a looking into cooking, here’s the recipe:

Muffy Cooking

The idea is users get to learn cooking, the recipes, the ingredients. And brands can sponsor this topic by telling users where to buy these stuffs.

Muffy Beaticfier

Muffy Models

Muffy Models

Muffy Models

Translation: People love beaty. If you click on a clothing item, it will take you to a map that marks the suppiler location. Get it? If you don’t, a more visual pointer can be of help:

Muffy Map

Here’s my take:

• It’s a simple idea that’s different from what others are doing here. No cloning.


• It brings value to users and advertisers alike. Users want real-time, trust-worthy, fun stuffs. Advertisers want to target them subtly. You wanna buy a necklace? Here’s our store.


• This thing takes time. It needs to attract a large enough userbase, which then lure a big enough number of advertisers into buying the space.


• Blogging and Mobile are two of the most popular platforms. Fish where the fish are.


• They can add as many topics/extensions to Muffy as they want to, as long as there’s demand for it.


• Flash is nice. But I’m not a fan. Is there any better, or to put it right, more suitable technology for this kind of stuff?



The rest is for you, feel free to take a look and give it your shot.

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