Corina Mackay

Name: Get Glue

More Info/Download: getglue.com

Pros: Integrated with sites like IMDB and Wikipedia, recommendation engine, competitive game-like elements, sharing options for Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, iPhone and Android apps available.

Cons: Lack of diversity in content, but the way new pages can be created (detailed below) is useful to improve this issue.

Unlike my last two Try This posts, which detailed products to enrich your online life (check them out here and here), today’s post is about a service called GetGlue. You are probably already familiar with Facebook‘s ‘like’ button, which can now be seen all over the web on various sites. You may also have heard of Foursquare or Gowalla, which are location-based applications that allow you to check-in to locations and earn points and rewards. GetGlue is somewhat of a mixture of these two ideas. Once you sign up for a free account, you can ‘like’ various products, such as books, movies, actors, bands, albums, tv shows and video games. You can also download a free iPhone app (an Android app is currently in beta) and use it to like, dislike and comment on these items as well. The best part about the iPhone app, though, is that you can check-in to something you are currently engaging with – for instance, if you are watching a movie, you can check-in to that movie, showing your friends on GetGlue (and Facebook or Twitter if you choose to link your account) what you are doing.

Although this may sound very similar to the way Facebook ‘likes’ work, as they show up on your profile and you can share them with your friends, here’s where it gets interesting. GetGlue have created a reward system, similar to Foursquare’s badges, called stickers. As you do various activities on the site or through the iPhone app, such as checking in to a particular item several times, or engaging with other users, you will earn virtual stickers that are shown on your profile. Even cooler than that, however, is the fact that you can actually have your stickers mailed out to you! Once a month, you can choose to have the stickers you have earned online sent to you in the mail – how cool is that?

Of course, there are several secret stickers, which will require some digging around to find out how to earn them, and GetGlue has recently teamed up with several entertainment companies to release limited edition sponsored stickers for various tv shows such as Dexter, Entourage and True Blood. Like the standard GetGlue stickers, users can choose to have these mailed out to them, once they’ve worked out how to unlock them all!

Apart from earning stickers by checking-in to items, you can also leave comments and reviews to get a conversation started around a particular topic. Other users can vote for your comments to say that they agree, or they were useful to them, and the user with the most activity on a page, including check-ins, comments, and votes from other users will be awarded the Guru title for that product or topic. Although Guru is a much contested position, and you can be knocked off the perch at any time, while you’re in the driver’s seat you have special privileges – Guru Giveaways are a regular occurrence, as entertainment companies use GetGlue to market their products by giving away freebies to Gurus, and the editing functions on each page are controlled by the Guru, allowing you to edit the image, description and suggestions.

Suggestions or recommendations is one of the major benefits of GetGlue that I’ve yet to touch on. As you like various topics and products on the website, or through the iPhone app, GetGlue will put together a stream of recommendations specifically tailored to suit your tastes. The more items you like, the better recommendations you’ll get. As a Guru, you have the option of adding your own recommendations on top of those automatically generated for the pages you control. New Releases are included in the recommendation engine, so every week when you check your stream of suggested content it will be updated with recently released products similar to the items you’ve already liked. As well as connecting with your friends and keeping up to date with what they like, this is a great way to discover new content, as each page you visit includes links to sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, IMDB and Netflix to enable instant engagement with the content.

Lastly, one of my favourite parts of the GetGlue service: the browser plugin. Once downloaded, the toolbar add-on for your browser enables a GetGlue toolbar to appear at the bottom of your screen when you visit participating sites. There are many, many sites involved (check here for a complete list), which enable you to like, check-in and comment on content around the web. Here’s the best part: say that you visit a page on Wikipedia, and the GetGlue toolbar shows up. You’ll see who’s visited the page previously, how many people like it, who the Guru is, and similar topics or products, as well as having the options of liking and engaging with it yourself, through your GetGlue account. But what about if there is no page set up on GetGlue for that particular topic yet? This nifty little toolbar will automatically create a page using the information on Wikipedia! So you might be the first person to visit this topic using GetGlue, but the page is all set up for you! Plus, if you’re the first person to like it, you automatically get to be the Guru!

Now, before you run off to sign up and download the app, let me just warn you: this can be very addictive. Especially when you first sign up, as you have a whole life’s worth of things to like and dislike! Now, go check it out, and let me know how you like it!

Image from here