There’s no learning curve with Persai: enter terms you’re interested in and it returns articles on a regular basis. No social networks, no friend lists, no ratings. Just news. So simple, it’s almost jarring at first glance. Once the engine returns relevant articles, you have two choices – read or reject. Both actions help the engine learn, yes, but Persai’s creators – Matt Kent, Kyle Shank and Ted Dziuba – don’t want users to set out with the aim of teaching the engine. “Just use the thing,” they say in the company blog. So that’s precisely what I did. Among the several interests I set up – including emerging tech, election 2008, independent film and semantics – Persai hits closest to the mark for election ’08 and semantics. I attribute the former to a large pool from which to draw and the latter to the specificity of the term. The independent film category has been the toughest for the engine to nail; for some reason, it keeps giving me articles about the Indian film industry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’ve never been in a beta quite like Persai before. Its creators don’t give interviews, there’s no whiz-bang design to pretty up the site, and I don’t think I’ve ever received an email from them, a la, “Here are our new features! Tell us how it’s going! Are you happy? Let us know if you’re not!” They’re not marketers, in other words. All that’s left to contend with is the technology and I find that profoundly interesting. Users are essentially thrown into the engine with little background or direction as to how to use it. I suspect this is what a beta looked like way back before it became a marketing term: wrestle with the tech for a bit and here’s a tiny Feedback link if you have suggestions.

Persai is in a profoundly tough space, considering the breadth and depth of companies playing in recommendation, machine learning, and news filtering. Its revenue model currently consists of contextual ads, which I’ve found to be quite close to the mark when filtered through their engine. In short, Persai has wormed its way into my daily grind, whether I wanted it there or not. I find articles that I’m not seeing anywhere else. The company is clearly smart about its algorithms. But how they push those out to the market, make them friendly for mass consumption and position themselves against weighter entities will be just as much, if not more, of a test.

Until a couple of months ago, I had admittedly only dipped a toe into the morass of social innovations now available. Screening companies for DEMO and providing analysis to The Guidewire Report monopolizes my time and I tended to try out a service for a week or two, only to leave my profile languishing afterward. But as I wade deeper into emerging tech and blogging – and present myself as an expert on startups – I’d be remiss not to immerse myself fully into key services. So I’ve dove headfirst into FriendFeed and Twitter, Twine and PlaxoPulse, Persai and YouNoodle, Facebook and LinkedIn, and some 10-15 others I won’t assault you with. The problem isn’t that these services are faulty. It’s the exact opposite – I’m loving them. They’re delivering so well on their promises that I continually add them as must-visit sites. The fabulous little Firefox add-on Morning Coffee now opens up 10 tabs every morning, each with links to read, comments to make and interesting tidbits to submit to my network. To keep things as simple as possible, I’ve struck my banking and financial sites from the Morning Coffee list and now wonder from afar if my e-bills are up to date. (On second thought, this could come in handy should my money start tanking; I’ll just blame my social graph.)

Everyone’s been raving about FriendFeed in recent weeks and I couldn’t agree more. I only just joined Persai and am hugely impressed with its learning capabilities. Plaxo Pulse may lose the war to FriendFeed but they’ve designed a great interface. And Twine – well, I can’t talk about Twine until next week but it’s good stuff. It now appears though that we need a bigger umbrella technology, something to scale the firehose back down to a drip but still retain the sophistication of the current innovations.

The opposing side of the Economist debate was John Maeda, president-elect of the Rhode Island School of Design. His view is that, seeing as how all of these technologies – especially the ones I mention above – are in their infancy, it would be foolish to write them off as complicating life until they’ve reached maturity. It’s a strong point and one of which I must continually remind myself. True early adopters must be willing to endure complication in order to one day reach simplification. So maybe my question shouldn’t be, “where does the social graph end?” but “where is it going to take me?”