Strands Launches Updated Friend Recommendations Service

Strands is announcing the launch of a new private beta today. The new service seems similar to Valley-darling FriendFeed but takes the good part of FF one step further. Strands is offering a service that not only aggregates your friends social profiles, but also offers "tastes". The "tastes" are recommendations for other content based on the content you like from your friends. I've written many times about how important discovery is for Web sites and blogs and now Strands is pushing discovery into individuals lifestreams.

Strands is also focusing on Data Portability with this new service. They note, "Without inventing new or proprietary technologies, we will identify and encapsulate taste-related data and enable the users who own it to take it with them. We will leverage into existing efforts including OpenID, OAuth, and APML-style representations for our relative preferences of all types and not just our attention preferences. Users will be able to take their taste profiles with them to other websites that are prepared to be taste profile consumers."

There's a desktop application (shown below) that displays your friends activities in real-time. The application also records what you are doing and sends the information to your friends streams. So if you are listening to the Beatles in iTunes, it will let your friends know which song you are currently listening too. Better be careful before you pull up that naughty Web site you like to visit every day!

Check out our interview with Strands VP Communications, Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria.