Firefox plugin Glue: sacrifice privacy, get social recommendations

In case you haven’t noticed it yet, there’s a recommendation industry emerging which offers its services for “free” in exchange for your privacy. Share your web apps on Wakoopa, see on which site you waste time at 8aweek, and give away your playlist at Last.fm. I use or used all of these services, they’ve proven to be of great value. Yet I don’t have anything anymore that comes close to privacy. For that matter, I might start using Glue as well.

With Glue, you can see what your friends thought of the books, music, movies, wines, restaurants, gadgets, stocks, actors and tv shows you browse along. A toolbar pops up, and by clicking on a friend’s name, you can tell what they thought of it. Here’s a video explaining how Glue works:

This product by AdaptiveBlue might be of use for people who shop online a lot. As a true web geek, I get most of my friend’s recommendations via Twitter, blogs, or services like Last.fm. But apart from the privacy, it doesn’t hurt me to give Glue a spin as well. The only challenge here, is a familiar one: I’ll have to persuade my friends to start using it as well. If only they wouldn’t use Internet Explorer…