I spent part of the weekend in stealth mode. It all started with leaving my iPhone at home on Sunday morning. We were halfway to breakfast when I realized. This meant a couple of things.
Thing One: If someone wanted to call me, they wouldn’t get me. Thing Two: I couldn’t check in at The Red Hen, a local brunch spot and one of my FourSquare Mayorships.
My only real competition for that mayorship was the person riding beside me in the car. Conveniently, Nikki left her phone at home as well. So unless some other enterprising social mediaphile stepped into my territory, I was safe.
But for the rest of the afternoon, even after we’d returned home and headed back into the world, I didn’t check in. Not at the shoe store, not at the hippie grocery. Only later did I do so, and even then FourSquare placed me in the wrong location.
But while I wasn’t checking-in to FourSquare, I was checking out Glue.
What is it? It’s like a reviewing platform crossed with a messaging service, parked next door to a 24-hour Barnes & Noble. Or maybe it’s like Twitter, only with more specific prompts. It’s not just “What Are You Doing?” but instead, “What’s that book you’re reading?” Or “What’s that TV show you’re watching?”
And then it gets nosey. “I see you like this TV show, but what do you think about this other TV show? What about this one? And hey, that actor is pretty cool, right?”
This seems like it might be annoying, but it isn’t. Instead, though a sticker-ing system, it becomes kind of addictive. “In just 42 more book reviews, you’ll get a sticker …” And so, because stickers are on the line, you keep clicking “I like it” or “I don’t like it” or “Not for me” on the proffered books, movies, albums, gadgets and so on.
After a weekend’s worth of tentative clicking, I have seven stickers. I’m also the guru of a couple of jazz album pages.
So what’s the point? Well, after telling Glue that I liked a couple of Caleb Carr novels, the system suggested a few others that users said were similar. I looked them up (as they’re linked to Amazon) and sent samples to my Kindle. One of them was a new Matthew Pearl novel that had escaped my notice. I’ll probably buy it.
Even though I enjoy GoodReads and LibraryThing, not once has either service recommended a book that was right up the alley of another I enjoyed. But Glue did, and it did so because users made thematic connections that simple categories could not.
And the reviewing component is rather robust. See something you like, review it. You might become the Guru for that page. Or just make a widget for your blog, like this one (hover over it for the awesome):
(I’m angling to become the Archie Bell & The Drells Guru. Why? Because.)
There’s also Twitter and Facebook integration, as well as browser-installed fun with sites like Amazon and IMDB.
After a weekend with it, I’m impressed. So get it, play with it … and let me know what you think.
