Listal Review

I recently had a chance to take a look at Listal, a new social networking site that is based around movie, music, book and game collections.

Tom from Listal has provided some information about the product:

User similarity calculations and Item recommendations:
We compare ratings given to items and calculate a percentage match with other users on the site so you can easily find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games. Item recommendations are also calulated based on ratings a member has given.

List sharing:
Lists and collections are shared via a simple url [username].listal.com, widgets are available to be placed on other sites in both flash and javascript format, the flash widget displays a slideshow of items in a collection and the javascript format is a list with product image and title.  All lists also have rss feeds which have also been extended to include listal specific information.

Collection management:
Items can be tagged and give a status (e.g. Read, Reading, Unread) and be marked as loaned. List can be sorted and filtered by rating, status, tag or loan status. There are 3 types of list, for example for books there are owned, wanted and read. There are also custom lists which are designed for short themed list which can be reordered with a drag and drop interface.

Friends page:
The friends page allows you to add friends and see what they have reviewed recently, see things they are reading, playing or listening to and see items and lists they have recently added.

At first glance, Listal looks beautiful. The interface is very well thoughtout and the design complements the usability of the site.

My suggestions for Listal:

• What is the difference between a movie and a dvd? Aren't movies dvds and vice-versa? Not sure both categories are needed.
• I love how the site pulls in information from Amazon - why not pull in the reviews as well? This is really what would make purchasing decisions quicker and also beef up the content on each item page

The site brings together some of the best elements of social networking: tagging, friends, connecting with others, a forum and private messaging between friends. It's nice to be able to get suggestions based on my past purchases and viewings and to be able to connect with people who have a similar passion. You can create a well-rounded web page about yourself and a full list of everything you have rated and tagged.

So many times I write about these networks needing a base of users for them to survive and eventually grow. Listal shows a current base of 8000+ members and almost 600,000 items listed. I give it some extra points for creating a mashup with so many partners to create a good destination web site.