Last night I had an opportunity to take a look at Glue, self-described as “a contextual network that uses semantic technology to automatically connect people around everyday things – books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more.” When I looked at it, my initial thought was that this is a similar in some regards to LivingSocial.
After I looked at it more I realized that the application connects the activities of users around various objects on the web. What’s interesting is that if you view a movie on Netflix and your friend goes to view the same movie on IMDB, the engine can tell your friend about your related activity. This is pretty interesting and it appears to be more about the intelligence of the engine than a feature heavy product.
At first glance the application doesn’t wow users with limitless features. As you begin to dig and use the product, the benefits rapidly become apparent. While the company has not stated their intention to integrate into Facebook or other social networks, you can rapidly see the value of this tool integrated into your existing networks. Given the individuals behind this project, I’d imagine that they have this in mind for expansion purposes.
Ultimately the key is building a highly intelligent engine and then plugging it into a larger network of individuals. The AdaptiveBlue team focuses on building smart products and this is definitely one of them. I’ll be interested to see how this product evolves over the coming months. For now, this is another great product to add to the team’s portfolio.
The more exciting part will be watching what types of smart services and tools the company can roll out as the semantic engine behind their separate products becomes more intelligent. If you want to try out an intelligent way to connect with your friends based on the objects their interacting with, go download the Glue application for Firefox.
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I wanted to clarify one thing for your readers: right now it integrates into Facebook in two ways.
First - it can leverage your friend relationships from Facebook so that you do not have to recreate your social graph (it can also leverage your social graph from Twitter and Friendfeed)
Second - there's a Facebook app that is accessible via a link in the product that will show you: (i) what's most popular with your friends; (ii) what's most popular with all Glue users.
Again, thanks for the kind words!
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