Bloom Studio, which was founded by three stewards of data science and visualization, is working on a suite of iOS applications that present social media and streaming data in playful visualizations with personal context.  Bloom, which refers to its applications as “instruments,” is now pushing its first iOS release, Planetary, through the Apple App Store approval process, just as co-founders Ben Cerveny, Tom Carden and Jesper Andersen are closing the company’s seed round of funding.  Planetary turns music data into a solar system-inspired visualization experience. In the app, music is sourced is from the user’s iPod library and reconstructed so artists are seen as stars, albums as planets and tracks as moons. The user can fly between entities to build playlists.  “It’s about seeing your collection in a new way,” says Cerveny, who shares that the application will understand the relationships between songs, genres and artists. Future versions of Planetary will incorporate streaming music services — think Rdio or Spotify — and work the user’s social graph into the galaxy to allow for new music discovery.  Planetary is just one of many little instruments that Bloom is working on. The startup aims to present the user with new ways of understanding, interacting with and acting on data visualizations for many social data streams. They’re all playful and game-like visual search applications, says Cerveny. He hints that a visualization around Netflix is in the works and that the startup will eventually bring these instruments of discovery to the living room.  To finance its endeavors, Bloom has closed a seed round of funding led by Betaworks with participation from Ron Conway’s SV Angel and individual investors. Cerveny says the financing will provide the four-person, San Francisco-based team with enough funds to operate through the year. Bloom is actively considering a follow-on addition to the seed round.  Those anxious for a sneak peek at Bloom’s idea of fluid playful discovery can take a look at demo applications Fizz and Cartagram, which offer up visualizations for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, scorpion26
Newly financed startup Bloom is readying the release of iOS applications that will turn data streams into actionable visualizations.