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.

Business Week Launches Social News Exchange

There are number of social news offerings on the Web these days with sites like Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. They offer a great way to discover new content from across the Web. Business Week has just rolled out its own social news offering called Business Exchange. Though Business Exchange is still very much an alpha it already appears to offer a number of topics and links to content contributed by the community. The articles are then linked back to the original source.

SocialThing 2.0

SocialThing, a Boulder, Colorado TechStars startup that aggregates all your online social updates into one slick lifestream, launched into private beta this past March in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive event. I got a chance to get a preview of the product the week before as SocialThing showed off its stuff at TECH cocktail Boulder. I was impressed and have been using it online and via the iPhone version ever since.

Just a few weeks ago, SocialThing rolled out version 2.0 of the product. The previous version was pretty but version 2.0 looks even better than before. It offers users more control of the presentation via the settings. For example users can now sort by friends or by time. Users can also allow others to link directly to a public profile with controls on what appears in the feed. SocialThing has reworked the way they retrieve updates from all your favorite services so that updates are not pulled back in a constant flow but are batched. This allows SocialThing to indicate when there are additional updates that you might want to refresh your page to receive. Additionally, they have rolled out a new iPhone application that allows for on-the-go posting of status and trolling of your lifestream. It is pretty slick.

StyleFeeder Opens Social Shopping API

StyleFeeder, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based personal shopping engine startup, is announcing its open API that lets developers create third-party applications, widgets and even integrate all of StyleFeeder's key functionality into any e-commerce website.

According to a recent release, StyleFeeder founder and CTO Philip Jacob had this to say:

"Essentially, we're offering a potent set of personal and social online shopping tools to developers -- the possibilities are endless."

StyleFeeder offers a Web 2.0 social and personalized shopping recommendation engine. By learning about a user's likes and dislikes, StyleFeeder helps them shop and discover new products they might just want to buy or share with others. StyleFeeder also has leveraged social media to offer a pretty solid fashion and style blog.

Fantasti.cc Aggregates Free Web Porn Videos

Editor's Warning: This article contains adult content and it not suitable for children. If you are under age please navigate away from this article immediately. Thank you.

It is no secret that sex sells. I have previously highlighted the work of GOOD Magazine in creating this video explaining the porn industry and its financial success. That said, pornography generates interest and revenue both online and off and it was only a matter of time before Web 2.0 principles were applied to online porn. Zivity is one startup doing some interesting things in the space by enabling anyone to create and post their own videos, photos and other content and generate revenue for doing so. My friend Orli Yakuel has also previously pulled together an article showcasing a number of Porn 2.0 services. Fantasti.cc aggregates online video content from many of the video sites she listed.

Diigo v3: Improves Social Bookmarking

Diigo, a Reno, Nevada based startup I previously covered when it launched Web Slides, just launched version 3.0 which offers an integration of a number of social bookmarking and research services that create a powerful set of community tools.

What is new with Diigo v3? The Diigo v3 launch includes a completely new user interface and code base, hundreds of new features and most notably a tightly integrated social networking with knowledge-sharing. This improvement puts Diigo in direct competition with delicious and other web 2.0 social bookmarking products.

Polyvore: Flickr For The Fashion Shopper

Are you a fashion trend setter? If so, you might want to check out Polyvore. Polyvore is a social fashion site where users can create arrange outfits or inspiration boards to share where you and others can potentially buy the included items. Polyvore enables users to drag and drop clothing items or snag items from the Web to create new outfits which are then tied into various shopping sites and could offer some interesting revenue sharing options. Launched in February 2007 and backed by Benchmark Capital, Polyvore recently hit the one million outfit mark.

Video: MetroProper Local Business "Digg"

MetroProper, a Chicago-based company, that recently demoed at TECH cocktail Chicago 7 just relaunched their site to offer a totally fresh design. Deemed as "Digg for local businesses" MetroProper offers an number of social sharing and bookmarking features.

I got a chance to chat with Philip Tadros founder of MetroProper and he detailed some of the design changes prior to its launch.

Shareaholic Saves You Browser Clutter

Shareaholic, the popular Firefox extension that aggregates bookmarklets that I previously covered on Somewhat Frank, has released an update which continues to strengthen its value proposition as the web browser extension that offers one stop sharing. Shareaholic has recently added Tumblr, Mixx, Simpy and FriendFeed to its sharing options which already include a number of sites. Shareaholic also offers popularity metrics like how many times the a page you are visiting has been Dugg or saved to del.icio.us.

My favorite thing about Shareaholic is that it helps remove some of the clutter that piles up from installing and a number of social bookmarking and sharing bookmarklets. Check out the latest Shareholic release and share to your hearts content.

Someone Please Buy Digg Already!, Mozilla Weave News, Evan Williams On Product Ideas, Fraxi Digg Cloner & 50 Sports Social Networks

Photo of the Week: I took this photo of the Christmas tree in front of the Hancock Building while working from Chicago, Illinois this past week.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 12.23.2007

AideRSS Helps With RSS Information Overload

Managing information overload is not an easy task these days with all the blogs, feeds and other content options filling up my feed reader. How can a user better navigate to the items that might interest them the most? This is a tough problem to solve as every users is different. AideRSS is trying to solve this problem by helping to filter out the noise and deliver only the content the most popular content by sampling the wisdom of the crowds.

Holiday Gift Wish List Round-Up

The holiday season is upon us and it is time to get your holiday wish list in order. In my family if I do not produce and circulate a wish list I could end up getting some random gifts for the holidays. While all gifts are appreciated, sometimes the best ones are those that you wished for. What's the best way to collect, organize and share your holiday wish list? There are a number of Web 2.0 sites that are devoted to creating shopping or holiday wish lists and I will showcase eleven of them in this article.

LinkDoozer Literally Put Me To Sleep

LinkDoozer, an online bookmarking startup, offers a way for users to easily add and save bookmarks in a startpage-like approach. Unlike typical social bookmarking sites that look for users to add as many bookmarks as possible LinkDoozer focuses on users adding only the sites they like the best and encourages users to rate and review site. With social networking aspects LinkDoozer lends itself to easy link sharing similar to other social bookmarking site.

Gooruze Online Marketing Community

If you are an online marketer you might be looking for a place to connect and share ideas with other marketers. Gooruze was recently launched to offer a ranked advice community for online marketing professionals.

Polar Rose Puts A Name With A Face

Putting a name with a face can sometimes be a rather taunting task in public. However, online Polar Rose is looking to help solve this problem by leveraging facial recognition technology and the power of people online.