SOMEWHAT FRANK

Glue Connects You With Friends On Sites Visited

Conversations are being sparked in a number of places on the Web these days from Twitter to Facebook to blogs. AdaptiveBlue's product called Glue takes a different approach by enabling conversations and sharing on sites that you visit via the browser. Glue is an browser plugin that appears on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought. It brings your social network to the content pages that you visit rather than integrating directly into various web sites.

Glue 4.2 Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Check out the quick video (above) and GetGlue to try it out if you haven't already as it just launched a new release. The new release contains the following (as described by Glue):

1. Connected Conversations: Glue enables web wide contextual conversations around books, movies, music and other everyday things. Now users can discuss the things they like with their friends regardless of which sites they all visit.
2. Smart Recommendations: Glue automatically aggregates friends activity from across the web so that users can instantly see what books, music, and movies their friends like the most. Simply by using Glue, users implicitly recommend things to their friends and benefit from friends recommendations.
3. Web Wide Top Lists: Glue features web wide top lists of popular books, music, movies and other everyday things. These lists are calculated based on the aggregate weekly activity of all Glue users. The lists reveal what things users are paying attention to as they browse the web.

Also you can connect and spread the Glue love a number of different ways on the Web.

Thummit For Mobile Recommendations

Last week I got a chance to attend a dinner and demo night for the new startup called Thummit. Thummit is a new service that looks to offer simple, social and portable recommendations. It is currently focused on the restaurant scene and offers a way to send recommendations via text message or Twitter. You can simply text thumbs up, down or maybe to Thummit and the service does the rest. Thummit can also send restaurant recommendations back to you via text message. If you are trying to make a dining decision between a couple of different restaurants Thummit can help by enabling you to setup a poll among friends and then send it out via text message.

Sharing My Love For Shiny Objects In Orlando

I love startups. I love social media. And I love "shiny new objects" as I refer to the new products on the Web. I am in Orlando, Florida today and spoke at BlogOrlando this morning all these "shiny objects" of the Web. I have share some of the shiny new objects I mentioned today in my session - because sharing is caring. :) You can watch the session as it was recorded and streamed live. 

Strands Offers $100K To Best Recommendations Startup

The Strands, a recommendations company with offices in Virginia, has put a little $100,000 prize to the best recommendation startup. What does that mean? The Strands seek to identify the best early stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project. The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands. Winners will be awarded at the upcoming ACM Recommender Systems Conference in Switzerland. If you are interested or maybe you can recommend someone - check out the full contest details.

Cuil Search Launches Aimed At Google

There have been a number of startups that have launched with Google in its sites and most have failed miserably as it is very much like the story of David and Goliath. But I love to see the competitive spirited startup that is up to taking on the challenge. Cuil, pronounced "cool," launched today looking to take the Google challenge. I took a look at the new search service and reported my findings in this article.

LivingSocial Offers Recommendations Galore

Where do you usually find out about a new book to read, a new song to listen for or even a game to play? I think most of us would say we find new things through our friends and social interactions. LivingSocial, a DC-based startup created by the Ruby on Rails development shop Hungry Machine, is looking to help with similar social recommendations. Started as a Facebook application, LivingSocial offers a handful of vertical recommendation sites (books, food, music, movies, beer, and games). Leveraging the Facebook social graph LivingSocial claims to have 6.4 million beta users, who have collectively reviewed nearly 80 million items since February.

AOL Buys Sphere For Content Recommendations

My first day working at AOL back in the fall of 2006 I had the pleasure of having lunch with Sphere CEO and founder Tony Conrad as he was visiting to start working with the AOL. Since then, Sphere which I covered previously when it launched in May 2006, worked with both AOL News and myAOL Mgnet Recommendations to offer related content recommendations. It is a pleasure to see that AOL has finally acquired Sphere for an undisclosed amount.

Outbrain Launches Content Ratings Widget

Taking a page out the Netflix and Amazon playbook, outbrain, a New York-based startup, officially launched yesterday to offer a ratings and recommendations widget for content. With outbrain bloggers, news, media, magazines, rss readers and other publishers/aggregators can add a rating and personalized content recommendation widget to their blogs and sites easily and free.

Loladex Local Search Based On Your Friends

Finding the best place to eat, get your teeth cleaned, get a haircut or buy groceries in your local neighborhood can sometimes be a daunting task using the Web. While there are some sites like Yelp that lend a helping hand they don't cover everything you might be looking for and they certainly do not have all of your friends recommendations.

Loladex, a Washington, DC based startup, which just officially launched today is looking to offer prioritized search based on recommendations of Facebook friends. Loladex, founded by Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman both formerly of AOL, is looking to offer true word of mouth by creating a compelling local search engine experience for just about anything in your area.

blippr Simple Social Recommendations

Looking for something new to read, watch or play? blippr, a startup created by Tag Team Interactive, offers a social utility which aims to facility social recommendations about books, games, movies, music, and (soon) TV from your friends. With blippr users can compile lists of things that they love and "blip" them which is similar to voting for an item (i.e. digg). blippr enables users to discover, recommend, and organize media and share it with their network of friends.

A blippr lifestream view enables users to see the rest of the recently added items thus offering up social recommendations. These recommendations can be be tagged, rated and commented on thus added to the conversation. Users can also purchase a recommended book, movie or video via likes to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders. blippr also leverages classic Web 2.0 features like tags, comments and ratings from the rest of the community.

YTS VideoMap Facebook App Launches

YourTrumanShow, the personal video diaries startup, that launched, VideoMap, a video discovery widget at the DEMO Fall 2007 Conference has now released it to the Facebook world. VideoMap offers users the ability to see who links to them and who they link to as well as the video content they have collected. Users can follow along as a graphically rich visual map tracks the path of discovery, relationships, and content. VideoMaps also leverages YourTrumanShow's recommendation algorithms to help cultivate social interactions.

Online Advertising Estimates, Lifestreaming Tips, 10 Recommendations Engines, Pownce Updates API & Twitter Preps For SXSW

Photo of the Week: This past week I spent some time at the Future of Web Apps in Miami and snapped this shot while a panel of 11 experts tried to come up with an new app in 40 minutes.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.02.2008

LOUD3R Network: Quick News For Enthusiasts

If you are a motorcycle or political enthusiast than listen up because you are going to like this. LOUD3R, a network for niche enthusiast offerings, has launched a couple of different aggregation sites. FAST3R the motorcycle site and VOT3R the political site are pulled together by leveraging a semantic publishing engine used in combination with natural language processing and human intelligence the engine selects and publishes the best and most interesting content to the network. Users can also contribute content and comments to the site.

Has Your Blog Been Blogged?

Looking to explore and find a few new blogs on the Web? Blogged is blog directory launched earlier this week to aid discovery and exploration of the blogosphere. Blogged is self-funded by founders Kenneth Yeh and Gladys Kong and is powered by readers and also employs a full-time editorial staff to maintain the integrity of the directory.

Movial Social Communicator: Share Anywhere

Have you ever taken a photo or seen a video and wanted to immediately share it with your friends while on the go? Obviously you could upload it to Flickr or Facebook or a number of other sites but more than likely times you probably would fire off an email to your friends to share it with them. Your friends would then get your message at various times depending upon when they actually go to check their email which means you are not instantly communicating with your friends.

Movial is looking to help make sharing easier with the recent launch of Movial Social Communicator. Social Communicator offers a desktop client and mobile application that syncs all your mobile phone contacts and empowers users to send videos, photos and news directly to their friends at their current location.