uGenie started as a shopping comparison engine and later on launched iRead, a facebook app that enables individuals to share their reading tastes and discover/rate/review books.

So far so good – but what’s really surprising is that uGenie is no longer about shopping comparison (the way it used to be), and the site only talks about their facebook/bebo app, iRead.

More so, the original shopping comparison links are still active (for e.g. this, and this), but not referenced from the main page.

The Context:

Last year, uGenie was sued by US’s largest wholesaler of higher education textbooks, Follett Higher Education Group (efollet.com) for ‘scooping up vast quantities of data‘ – i.e. accessing Follett’s systems via bots without any prior agreement[read the details here].

Is the entire site change a result of that? Or is this a mid-course correction (i.e. leverage the existing technology and increase adoption as well as monetize thru’ FB app ?)

uGenie guys have also launched SocialWizards, a company that build applications for social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, and Friendster etc.

uGenie raised $5mn from BlueRun ventures.

Rumor mill says that the company is planning to move back home (i.e. from Bangalore to US).

Connect the dots and one can weave a story. But I won’t speculate.

If you have more info, please share (confidentiality guaranteed) – mail me [ashish at pluggd.in]

tags: ugenie, socialwizards, iread

Tags: Indian Startups