DISQUS

andyswan · 1 month ago

All of that plus Fraser is the smartest guy in the room. That's win.

Fraser · 1 month ago

Andy, remind me to pay you the $5 when I see you next.

pescatello · 1 month ago

I've been an Glue (or AdaptiveGlue) user for a while (prob 2 years) and while i find it really interesting i've haven't found it that useful. What i currently like about it is the MyWare component of displaying the sites that you visit and categorizing them.

In my opinion, social sites i visit become useful and part of my online experience when they address a specific need or issue i have. Foursquare answers "What are your friends doing?" or "Where are you and and your friends?" and i use it because of that.

It reminds me of Pandora. They hired (back when they were SavageBeast) a bunch of musicologists to analyze and categorize songs by using 100+ musical attributes. That was all nice and dandy but it didn't become a popular site until they allowed users to enter in an artist and they'd create a station for you. Pandora answered the question "If i like this song, what other music would i like?"

Glue is now capturing lots of interesting data and categorizing it. I'm waiting to see what they will do for me now that they've done this.

ShanaC · 1 month ago

Exactly. I'm also finding it difficult to have it stay away from the fact that I look stuff up on wikipedia. All sorts of stuff. Why would I recommend Wikipedia, from a movie to a math page? I much rather refere a blog page or an image- but that seems harder to do.

It doesn't seem to have any follow through- what's the end goal? To pop up right before/after I watch netflix? To be a better drive down into amazon ratings? I'm lost...

Fraser · 1 month ago

Hi Shana, thanks for providing some insight and feedback.

We want to be the place that takes your web activity for every day things - books, movies, music, etc. - and turns it into usable information: suggestions / recommendations.

Some categories are already solid (i.e. books or movies) and others require a few tweaks (i.e. topics).

Keep the insight coming :)

ShanaC · 1 month ago

Part of the problem is I am not getting good recommendations from amazon.com. You need to find a way of opening up thier API, Hulus, Netflix- and then ask for people to rate them- and then give them other choices. Honestly The stuff I see sucks. From what I've given you in those categories, you do decently, but you need to force the user to rate naturally as part of the activities that they are doing already. Going to IMDB or to Amazon doesn't link neccessarily the reading/ watching/ of the book/movie/music to what you think you would like (and I need help in that category, I like a lot of stuff)

Rating it as you are doing it does. I forget what I like without prompting. I need to be there, or near there, in order to remember. That's a good momement to get people to rate. Otherwise- why am I doing this precisely.

I clearly know I lurck for thingds that interest me- but it doesn't mean I want to go and watch this stuff. Rate Hulu and Netflix and Itunes and Kindles (or amazon purchases.)
Rate what we do!

Mark Essel · 1 month ago

I learn so much from reading comments here on AVC. Great stuff pescatello

lawrence · 1 month ago

A few years ago it looked like the destination site might go away - that toolbars, widgets, and apps might be the web startup of the future.

It hasn't.

I think the arguments for having a strong home base to work in concert with your distributed spokes are stronger than ever.

This is a smart move by Glue.

Fraser · 1 month ago

@Lawrence, you are spot on. This is actually going to be the topic for the opening keynote at this years Add-on-Con.

Ryan Graves · 1 month ago

Fred you put me in touch with Fraser almost a year ago and I've loved being involved with Glue and helping them shape what it is today. They've done a phenomenal job creating a powerful yet light and compelling product! Kudos to Alex & Fraser and the gang.

Fraser · 1 month ago

@Ryan, this version of Glue wouldn't be as slick if we didn't have input and support from you and others along the way :)

Thanks!

Ryan Graves · 1 month ago

Thanks Fraser, it's been a blast being involved and watching the great
progress you guys have made. A truly kick ass team at AB.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

The progress the AB team has made in the past few months is really incredible

Robert Dewey · 1 month ago

I like it. I think as we head into the future, we'll see more and more services taking advantage of the social graph + recommendations. Whether it's content or commerce, friends and 2nd degree friends will matter significantly. Almost everything we do on the web will become social (I think the biggest winners will be in the commerce area).

Implementation is the key. Facebook screwed up big time with Beacon. I think this is something users need to ease themselves into, a la Glue.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

Glue is kind of the opposite of beacon. User driven as opposed to social net driven

Eric Falcao · 1 month ago

Is "Hill Country" a Texas Hill Country-style BBQ like The Salt Lick, etc? How does it stack up?

Tariq · 1 month ago

I've eaten at Hill Country and Salt Lick (I live in Austin right now but spent the summer in NYC). One really cool thing about Hill Country is the fact that they have beef ribs. These are almost only a Texas thing, so it was definitely cool to find them up there (they were good).

Mark Essel · 1 month ago

Great Tariq, now I have a hunger for beef ribs. My pop loves bbq'ing these up.

Robert Dewey · 1 month ago

Proof that social recommendations matter. Love it.

Now if only I could figure out why Facebook and/or Disqus isn't picking up my profile information.

Tariq · 1 month ago

This looks really cool. I enjoy being able to gather data like this to look back and get a picture of how exactly I spend my time on the internet. So far I've been loving Last.FM. This looks pretty interesting though since it looks like a browser plugin and would run as more of a background process (whereas Last.FM is fired up every time I open iTunes).

Mark Essel · 1 month ago

I agree, I'm interested in the not so conscious stuff that I do on the web, and want to develop tools to work in that space.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

Its last.fm for the web with a defined set of domains. After spying on myself and publicly posting the data for years, I've come to appreciate the value of the limited set of domains

ryanbrown · 1 month ago

The link to Glue supported sites is broken, and I'm very curious ;) Mind updating that with the correct url?

ryanbrown · 1 month ago

oh gosh, nevermind. found it: http://getglue.com/sites

fredwilson · 1 month ago

thanks for finding that broken link Ryan. I've fixed it.

Geoff · 1 month ago

Seriously impressed by their customer service! 3minute response time to my email :-) Thanks Fraser

Fraser · 1 month ago

@geoff, if you're going to take a minute to write support, you can be sure that we'll take a min to respond.

it's the richest ways to connect with our community.

gscohn · 1 month ago

I'm a big fan of Glue!

Dre · 1 month ago

Totally agree.

JeremiahKane · 1 month ago

I think the site as opposed to just the plug-in is a key factor. Just as a blog loses something when it is reduced to a feed, there is something missing from a straight plug-in model.

The idea of "things" being an important attribute of people and source for recommendations is an important one. I really like what OurShelf is doing here as well (http://beta.rshelf.com/) ...as a way to both catalog my things but also tap into the social aspects that make these services compelling.

I need to find a way to put it all together: the music, tv shows and movies I like from Glue, Boxee, NetFlix . with the ones I have and like from OurShelf. Add the the restaurants I go to from foursquare to Glue etc.

I'm sure a business model exists for a company that separate the information from the applications. It doesn't diminish the applications, just makes it easier to use.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

Interesting idea to harvest the data from all these apps and aggregate it

GiordanoContestabile · 1 month ago

Hi Fred,

I just installed, and trying it out. Haven't had much time to check it out, but it looks to me that it could customize my profile much better from start if it could automatically) access my Amazon / iTunes purchase lists and libraries, as well as other stuff (e.g Facebook games I installed), and build an initial DB of my tastes based on past behavior. Can it?

Cheers,
Giordano

Alex Iskold · 1 month ago

Hi Giorgano,

Thanks for trying out Glue!

We are considering adding ability to point to your existing data in other networks so that it shows up in Glue. For iTunes, are you thinking import a library?


Alex

fredwilson · 1 month ago

If those services have apis and you authorize it, yes

Lindel D Eakman · 1 month ago

"Glue now has a "game like" element in which you can collect stickers and become the Guru of a particular item in the service. " - This reminds me of the idea of using a passport to encourage participation and provide status in my travel site! I'm still waiting for somebody to get travel put together the right way.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

Just do it lindel!

Mark Essel · 1 month ago

Fantastic model for growth! Especially appreciate the game like behavior. The dynamics of evolving web games is part of what makes building smarter web software fun for the users. It's groovy seeing all these different tools sprouting up on the web to help us not only share information, recommendations, and experiences but to help build the web's knowledge about us as users. I believe automated tools that can learn about our behavior is key to making the web experience even more meaningful, effective, and game changing.

ps the donation challenge numbers are looking good :D

Charlie Crystle · 1 month ago

I use Chrome.

Laura · 1 month ago

We plan to have a Chrome version of Glue ready for when Google enables add-ons for the browser.

Charlie Crystle · 1 month ago

cool. I'll fire up firefox to give it a try.

abhic · 1 month ago

This sounds like one of those 'they-didnt-have-it-already-?' features. Great to see it out in any case. I would love to see more 'regular' applications infuse gaming elements to spice things up.

As a startup founder, it would be awesome for Fraser to share some stats over time of any changes in engagement levels etc.

glenngutierrez · 1 month ago

I'm a big believer in being able to build a business through the use of browser plug-ins. I believe one of the reasons why this an even better time than any is that people are spending so much time online. It's seems so obvious but this can't be understated. I mean, ask just about any one you run into at Starbucks or at a University and they'll tell you they are online consuming content and engaging more than ever before. If our computers are replacing our TVs as our new source of entertainment then the browser through plug-ins have become the new customizable remote control.

Randall · 1 month ago

Fred,

I actually have a tangential question. I'm catching up on blog posts and noticed that Glue was written up on webware.com, avc.com, lifehacker.com, readwriteweb.com and techcrunch.com all on the same day. How did you help to coordinate that? That's an impressive feat of coordination and timing!

Randall

fredwilson · 1 month ago

I have no clue to be honest

ShanaC · 1 month ago

I'm still finding the weight a problem (then again I have a plugin heavy browser and I don't know why). And I still want to be very careful of intrusiveness. I've gotten hits from Glue on Facebook.

I'm also finding that the chasm cross is difficult. Certain things, I'm ahead of my friends. And I'm 23. That shouldn't be allowed. If the social net matters, it needs to be passively grabbed in such a way that those who have a program can get slight bits of information (not all just some) from those who don't. It would have to be super-granular, extremely fluid, and very passive. Essentially falling water onto rocks. It's useless without finding a way to build a flexible support underneath where it can tell- and it can tell from my silly web from my serious stuff here.

Keenan · 1 month ago

Fred, using Glue now.

Would love it if it could be used to recognize, and recommend Blogs. It would be very helpful to see what people think about specific Blogs via glue.

Can think of a million new uses for Glue but would love to see this one sooner than later.

fredwilson · 1 month ago

Kind of like marry glue and blogrollr

Keenan · 1 month ago

Exactly. ability to see not only what blogs, content people are
looking at but what they like about it (comments) and a list of who
else likes it. I would use this.

gwarrier · 1 month ago

I have been trying Glue for the past few weeks and I am really getting used to it. I think where it is taking me to atleast is like a central location for all my likes / dislikes of the stuff that I care about - books, movies, TV shows...and my reactions to these. And love the 'send to twitter' function.
Sure there is twitter and facebook...but I find it hard to categorize there and glue gives me that central location...