AdaptiveBlue, the makers of Glue, are expanding their product line to include a new website, bringing you suggestions for movies, music, and restaurants.
Glue, of course, is the semantic browser plugin that is very popular on the Firefox platform. There are three main components to the launch of the website: the suggestion stream, new user profiles, and a Foursquare-esque game component to the system.
The suggestion stream brings to you a steady inflow of recommendations of items that you will like. Glue bases this on both information collected from your use of the Glue add-on, what your friends like, and what is popular across the entire Glue network.
Glue has been growing, the system now rings up a rating on an item, every three seconds, twenty four hours a day.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The suggestion stream is your homepage when you log onto the new GetGlue.com, bringing you instant new recommendations for you to take a check out. Glue being the semantic system that it is, also pulls in information from around the internet about the recommended items, getting you up to speed on what you are being told to check out.
If a movie that is recommended looks interesting, Glue will serve you the trailer, the ratings for the movie, and even let you add it to your Netflix queue.
The suggestion stream is almost like a Last.fm for everything other than music that you have been listening to. All that while being clean, simple, fast, and accurate.
Glue is also adding in profiles for users, detailing your activity on the website, and giving your current Glue prescense more weight, and a better home. You can see on the profile of another person, how many things you have in common, by genre.
If you and I were friends on Glue, I would be able to see that we have liked 14 of the same books, but only 2 of the same movies, we would know that we need to bring over some popcorn while we work on your film tastes.
Also, for every user, there is a sortable grid of their likes, comments, and interactions across all genres of content, allowing you to track people carefully, looking for the best of what you have missed.
The last main component of the new website, is a game. Do you use Foursquare? If so, you are going to love this. Just like badges in Foursquare, GetGlue.com gives you ‘stickers’ for doing certain things. Like 100 movies in the system? Get a sticker. Connect 250 people to one item or another, have a sticker.
Glue takes it one step further, and employs something close to the Foursquare Mayor system, called ‘guru.’ There is only one guru per item, meaning that only one user can be the guru for Saving Private Ryan, or the Yankees.
This builds a natural competition among users to battle it out for their most loved items. Expect me to be the guru of the Metallica discography. One caveat, the Glue team is not explaining exactly what goes in to becoming the guru of any particular item, but it seems that more total interaction is the fastest way to get that top spot.
If you have never used Glue, I would still check out the website. If you have been using Glue, this is going to be a major treat, so get over there, and get some tips on what you will like, that you have not discovered yet.
As a final note, Glue put together a simple, short video explaining the changes. If you got a little bogged down in my explanation, I would watch it. Check it out here.
AdaptiveBlue is also releasing a major update to their Glue browswer add-on, watch for that in the next post.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.