This Temple student thinks the internet is too noisy

Praneeth Denduluri, a 19-year-old Temple University student, woke up one day thinking the internet was too noisy.
His social media feeds were full of narcissistic updates, baby pictures and other irrelevant information that he just didn’t care about. He also thought to himself how internet giants such as Google and Facebook control the information diet of most web users.
So, Denduluri asked himself a pair of insightful questions: Why is most of the information on the internet irrelevant to me, and, furthermore, why can’t I control what I see? This is when the idea of Filtrest was born.
Denduluri spent the better part of 2014 working on and a platform that intended to connect users based on their interests. He then had a soft launch of his initial product and gained some feedback from a small test group of 500 users.
“I created this platform because I found it nearly impossible to curate content from around the internet based on my interests, and then be able to engage in discussions with people that share those interests with me,” Denduluri said. “There is an overwhelming amount of information available online and it is almost impossible to distinguish the things that are relevant to me.”
It’s an ambitious task for the student entrepreneur — a young founder, like many in Philly, learning as they go.
Denduluri says Filtrest is currently in stealth mode while he continues to collaborate with an experienced team of developers. He hopes to raise a seed round to take the product to the next level: An effective filter that eliminates unwanted noise from people’s internet lives.
“Imagine a world where content delivery is based on what you are interested in, not based on solely what your friends are doing or what the latest trend on Twitter is,” said cofounder Karthik Musunuri. “Essentially, we are allowing people to focus on their interests, and filter out the rest.”