The News Funnel Raises $1M for Curated Business News Website

NEW YORK, Aug. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The News Funnel, a website that enables business readers to create a customized news funnel based on their unique preferences, announced today that it has closed its first round of funding with $1 million in outside capital raised.

Founded by Michael Beckerman, a 25-year veteran of the public relations industry, The News Funnel officially launched earlier this year for the real estate industry in Beta after nearly two years in development. The website's first round of outside capital consists of a small group of private investors.

The free site allows users to set their news preferences from a comprehensive list of criteria, creating a customized news stream based on these preferences in one location in real time. Users can also update their settings quickly and easily to change their news views.

The News Funnel has been launched in the New York Metropolitan area with plans to expand nationally and into other business-to-business verticals in the near future.

The website uses a sophisticated text analysis engine that performs natural language parsing and categorization of all real estate news content to identify what news maps to users' news preferences based on geography, industry segment, areas of interest and companies of interest.

With nearly 500 business and real estate-focused media sources featured on the site, as well as content – press releases, market research, blogs, industry events and more – supplied directly by corporations that are signed up for free via the site's Company News Channel service, The News Funnel curates news from the most comprehensive set of media sources in the real estate industry.

"The News Funnel was built to address some very basic needs that business professionals have by bringing them customized news in a live, 24/7 feed, as well as providing them with the ability to follow companies and topics of interest and to perform much more targeted searches on these topics," stated Beckerman. "The feedback to the site has already been extremely positive. The concept of others recommending articles or sending generic industry articles does not meet the needs of most business professionals. Our site allows for a level of customization unrivaled by any other curated business news site."

For more information on The News Funnel, visit www.thenewsfunnel.com.

About The News Funnel

The News Funnel is a free, web-based news aggregator for real estate professionals that sources industry-specific news from trade publications and major media sources. Subscribers create customized news feeds for their geographic market, industry segment and areas of interest that are accessed on their personalized home page or via a daily email.

The News Funnel features Company News Channels (CNC's) — web pages that are available at no charge to companies to upload press releases, event notifications, blogs and market research reports that are then distributed into the funnels of subscribers. The website also features simple and advanced search capabilities. Aggregated content is stored for six months and users can search this content by keyword, market, industry segment or area of interest.

Headquartered in New York City, The News Funnel was founded by Michael Beckerman, a 25-year veteran of the public relations and media industries. For more information visit www.thenewsfunnel.com.

SOURCE The News Funnel