Kraft Group investing $10m in a Net start-up, Matchmine

NEEDHAM - The Kraft Group, best known for its investments in projects like Gillette Stadium and the New England Patriots, is sinking $10 million into an Internet start-up that will map people's tastes, making it easier to discover content they like online.

Matchmine, which goes live next week, tries to turn what can seem ineffable and arbitrary - people's preferences - into a usable set of data.

People create a "MatchKey" by rating the movies, music, online videos, and blogs they like. The site tries to map the basic elements of each choice to make accurate recommendations, so that even people with eclectic tastes can easily find new content they like.

The key is portable, meaning users can automatically plug in their preferences to any site that partners with Matchmine, so that even if it's their first visit, they aren't inundated with a home page filled with hip-hop if they only enjoy baroque music, for example.

"We're at the intersection of this set of phenomena. You have this proliferation of media and yet it's harder and harder to find what you want," said Michael Troiano, chief executive of Matchmine.

While the Kraft Group is better known for a portfolio that includes sports, real estate development, and paper, Matchmine isn't its first foray into tech investments. The Kraft Group was behind the Internet venture PaperExchange, an online marketplace for the paper and pulp industry.

The Patriots were "the first pro sports team to have their own Web page; tech is just something the group has always been involved in," said Jonathan Kraft, president and chief operating officer of the company. "When we come across an idea we like, we'll put the capital in."

Ultimately, Matchmine hopes that people will use their keys every time they visit a new website, giving information about their preferences that helps them create a customized channel for themselves - while allowing websites to tailor advertising to the user's preferences, or create a home page that has a better shot at looking relevant.

Already, some online retailers tailor the pages people see according to their purchase histories, but any retailer would love to know how to craft a home page precisely to a user's taste, said Jeffrey Grau, a senior analyst specializing in e-commerce at the research firm eMarketer.

"The more different aspects of a person's consumer life or even social life that you can track, the better, the more rounded picture of that person you can develop," Grau said.

A model that gives retailers information about a visitor's tastes is superior to "the more one-dimensional model where you're on the Netflix site and all Netflix knows about you is what you've purchased from them before."

Matchmine is just the latest in a wave of Boston-area start-up activity triggered by the sale last year of a Watertown mobile content company, m-Qube, to Verisign Inc. for $250 million.

Troiano, who heads Matchmine, is a former m-Qube executive and has seen his colleagues move on to cofound the mobile start-ups Quattro Wireless in Waltham and Mobicious in Needham, and appear on the executive teams of mobile multimedia sharing company Aylus Networks in Westford and video technology company Gotuit in Woburn.

Matchmine will be launched next week, with a variety of ways to reach consumers as it ramps up. People can provide their ZIP code, sex, and age, and then rate their preferences, creating MatchKeys by telling the program what they think of a YouTube video of cats prancing around on two legs or rating "You've Got Mail" or "Raise the Red Lantern."

Once people have created their keys, they can launch a desktop widget called the gumball machine, which allows people to float their mouses over bouncing gumballs to sample new media that Matchmine thinks they will like. Their choices and opinions about the new media help "teach" the program.

The company is also creating a Facebook application that lets people see how well-matched they are with friends. Three partners - movie websites Peerflix and FilmCrave and music website Fuzz.com - will let users plug in their virtual keys.

Since Matchmine takes little information about users' identities, it avoids many of the privacy issues that could arise, the company says. "It knows a lot about what you like, and nothing about who you are," Troiano said.

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.