THE DREAM IN ACTION

AdaptiveBlue publically launched their new product today called Glue. My friend, Fraser Kelton, the VP of Business Development at AdaptiveBlue hooked me up with the product about a month ago through their private beta and it is awesome. It uses semantic web technologies to literally link your friends to the objects you view on the web. The company is focused on developing “personalization technologies that leverage semantics and attention”.  The number one thing that jumped out at me while using this product was ease of use.

Glue basically pulls the objects you consume ( any book, music, movie, or everyday consumer item that you view) and associates those products with you. Then as others view your sites (Blog, Twitter, etc.) or the host sites that host those products (eBay, Amazon, Last.fm, etc.), it shares your interests with others. Obviously, there are extreme monetization opportunities here. You get product recommendations from the people who are most influential to you, your friends!

Most web apps today have a purpose and a problem they are attempting to solve, but often times the barriers to making these application useful are large. The web applications that will really gain a lot of traction (quickly) are those where barriers to usefulness* are minimal or non-existent. Services like Plaxo and Facebook that now suggest friends based on the social graph behind the platform are incredibly effective ways to promote their product. Useful and easy = low barrier to entry. AdaptiveBlue has dominated this concept with their Glue product by automatically connecting or suggesting people to follow/friend based on similar product interests. They essentially develop your ‘product based’ social graph for you. Obviously they give you the option to ‘find friends’ because that manual process is still necessary as the technology is today, but eventually we will be able to add a service and it will automatically know who my friends are for that type of service. (!!!startup idea!!!)

If I’m viewing a product on Amazon it will show me which of my friends ‘liked’ or ‘gave their 2 cents’ on the product. Also, they will suggest others who liked the product (minimal barriers to usefulness).

See Glue bar on top of the page: On my blog other users who have Glue will be able to see a list of the products that I’ve viewed, like, or rated.

And finally like any good Web 2.0 application, I can create a profile with an avatar and personal information for others to use to rate my credibility or generally find more info about me.

After using Glue for about 2 weeks I found a book recommended from Eric Olson called “Creative Capital” which is the story of the father of Venture Capital, Georges Doriot. I never would have found out about the book without the product. I wasn’t looking for a book recommendation but just through the hidden social web that Glue builds I ended up making a purchase. Now you see the value, right?

Overall, I think that AdaptiveBlue is headed in the exact right direction. Bringing people and their activities closer and closer together. Unfortunately the majority of their products can only be used in Firefox as plug-ins, which is a huge limiter at this point. But, at such an early stage of development I think that the concepts behind their design in on point. Union Square Ventures is an investor in AdaptiveBlue which in my eyes is a success and a step in the right direction in its own right.

Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Give Glue a shot and lets make product recommendations to each other. Let me know what you think of the tool!