adaptiveblue Archive

NY-based Adaptiveblue has announced the launch of an API for their Glue service yesterday. AdaptiveBlue calls Glue a ”contextual network.” Here’s my overview of Glue from our initial review, “You install the browser plugin and then as you browse the Web normally, a menu shows up on any pages where Glue has information to share. These are typically pages dealing with movies, music, books, music artists, restaurants and wine.”

The company describes the API release as, “tapping into Glue’s databases and semantic recognition engine enabling fun & useful applications about people and things.” You can use the API to get popular lists, lookup user lists, create data streams, send info into Glue and access user profiles.

The goal of the API is to drive usage of Glue and the underlying data. The applications built using Glue should also provide new visibility for the Glue service.

The company is running a contest to find great ideas for the API. You could win an all expenses paid trip to NYC to meet the Glue team and have a hot dog and a knish. When you are in NYC, I recommend a visit to the transit museum.

Here are some updates from two NYC startups: Magnify.net and AdaptiveBlue that were released today.

Magnify.net

NY-based Magnify.net has announced a new set of packages aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses. Called the "Pro Packages" and priced starting at $249/month, the packages will include Magnify’s Quickstart, Business Builder Pro and Business Builder Premium offerings.

The new Pro Packages include training from Magnify and their hope is to help small businesses integrate a custom-branded video experience into their websites and ecommerce offerings.

Check out our extensive Magnify coverage.

AdaptiveBlue

NY-based AdaptiveBlue has announced the next version of their Glue toolbar today. I spoke with founder and CEO Alex Iskold who tells me that they have 35,000 active users and over 110,000 downloads of the Glue toolbar to-date.

The new functionality includes "connected conversations" which Alex’s calls an intelligent livestream and "popular lists" which should help the top content for the day to rise to the top.

Adam Ostrow has a good overview of the new features. AdaptiveBlue has also hooked in social sites Twitter and Facebook into this latest Glue release. The basic idea with the update is that all of your friends are on a big bus as you travel around the Web - each time you make a stop, your friends yell out from the back of the bus if this is a worthwhile stop or not.

Check out our extensive AdaptiveBlue coverage.

Just a week after the release of Glue from NY-based AdaptiveBlue, they have announced the launch of Glue for the iPhone. The iPhone version of Glue might even be more useful than the web browser version. The basic idea is that you can browse you favorites and your friend’s Glue usage as well. There’s also a tab to view popular items in a category which helps when your friends aren’t around.

What makes this app actually useful is the ability to be standing in a bookstore or movie rental shop, call up the Glue app and bingo, you get recommendations on a book or movie from your friends. No longer will you stand wondering if you should rent Office Space for the 100th time. There are wine helpers as well so you won’t look like a dud on your next date. 

Sarah Perez has more details on the Glue iPhone launch. Check out the Glue demo video from last week at the tech meetup. Here’s the company demo video on the iPhone launch:

Glue for iPhone from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Tonight AdaptiveBlue Director of Business Development Fraser Kelton presented their newest product, Glue. We reviewed Glue when it launched last month. AdaptiveBlue calls Glue a "contextual network."

Nearly everytime I write about NY-based AdaptiveBlue, I always note that while their technology is good, their ability to connect with a mainstream audience has been very limited. They seem to always push big tech words over what value the services actually provide. Last week I started playing with a new version of the AdaptiveBlue service which is a huge leap forward in attempting to reach out to the mainstream audience.

The AdaptiveBlue BlueOrganizer is no more. In its place is Glue, what the company calls a "contextual network." Here’s the basic concept behind Glue. You install the browser plugin and then as you browse the Web normally, a menu shows up on any pages where Glue has information to share. These are typically pages dealing with movies, music, books, music artists, restaurants and wine. You can also browse the full list of sites available in the Glue network.

The Glue bar shows up on the top of sites that Glue has a match for and is actually a HTML injection - this means it becomes part of the page and not a plugin that sits active at all times. The bar is a simple way to shows friends information related to the current item being viewed. You can see which of your friends like the item, which have commented on the item, along with where the person viewed the item. You also see a sample of others outside your network who liked the item - this helps with discovery.

You can click on a friend to see more information about them and the current item. From there you can select other services related to the current item including item purchase. There’s a "2 cents" option which lets you add comments about the item directly into Glue. I assume if they get enough traction on this 2 cents concept, it could lead to a very rich reviews destination site.

Their business model continues to be based on affiliate comissions through the use of the Glue bar. I hope they will look to diversify their revenue potential as I am a bit concerned that there won’t be enough sales to drive enough total volume. But affiliate revenue is good as a piece of the overall business model pie.

I think today’s launch is a great step forward towards the mainstream for AdaptiveBlue. Now the really tough work begins on getting mainstream user adoption - they need a strong number of users and friend relationships for the service to be effective.

Here’s a demo the company put together about Glue:

AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold has a post today discussing his time doing customer service. He suggests that all CEOs should do some customer service and support noting, "you will never think about your product and customers in the same way."

I’ve always been a nut about customer service starting from my very early days delivering newspapers. I would take Alex’s statement one step further. During my time leading product teams and large-scale marketing programs, everyone had some time on the customer service hotline. Designers, developers, marketing, it didn’t matter to me. While some of the team needed a coach from customer service to help them with the replies, it taught the team lessons about what customers look for in a product. The projects always seemed to finish stronger and we’d consistently receive more positive feedback.

It’s one thing to see the feedback on a chart or graph, it’s another thing to be immersed in it yourself. Products like GetSatisfaction are a good start. Check out what happened when we put 10 of the top Web apps to the customer service challenge. It’s worth a read - Technorati ranked worst, Dogster ranked at the woofpack.

Below I’ve emebdded a video from VW. It’s their latest commercial for the Golf. It made me wonder how many times we just hear, but don’t listen. Goes along with the customer service theme above.

Tonight NY-based AdaptiveBlue is announcing the launch of the latest version of their BlueOrganizer Firefox (and Flock) add-on codenamed Indigo. I had a discussion with CEO Alex Iskold and Biz Dev Director Fraser Kelton about the new features and my notes are below.

Iskold loves to talk about "semantic Web" — I think he has used the term more than any other single person online today. In simple terms, BlueOrganizer is a "smarter" way to browse. It takes normal links and enhances them. It senses what a page is about and can switch how it handles the page based on content type. For example, if you are on a book page on Amazon, BlueOrganizer knows and adjusts the links it presents to you. If it’s a movie site, you might see Fandango but you wouldn’t see that as an option on a music page. The little icons on the toolbar change to reflect what type of page it is.

There is a tie-into many of the major social services including: Twitter, Tumblr and Lijit which lets you export your saved items directly. It’s a good way to get your favorites out to your friends quickly.

When you install BlueOrganizer, it filters through your Internet history to determine what initially shows up on your BlueOrganizer profile. Iskold says that none of this data is transmitted to AdaptiveBlue.

One of the interesting bits I noticed when watching the video is that if you install the Smartlinks widget (another AdaptiveBlue product), it automatically adds BlueLinks to the site. This is a very smart distribution move. Once you install the BlueOrganizer add-on, it scans Web pages and injects the SmartLinks into the page as it finds them. It’s a good idea but at the same time, could it take away my chance to earn affiliate revenue? If I have a link to a book on Amazon using my affiliate code, and then the person goes to Amazon thru the SmartLink, I lose that sale. Perhaps there is a way to engineer it so I still receive credit.

The add-on also makes the most out of microformats so if you click on an address (that has microformats in use), it presents the address with links including Google Maps and other location-based information. The system also recognizes 500 common names and by clicking on a name, it provides a menu of options including Wikipedia and Google Search.

Some stats that Iskold shared include: 1.3 million downloads of the add-on, 5000 blogs have installed SmartLinks and hundreds of thousands of active users of BlueOrganizer.

The company continues with the same revenue model we have written about previously — affiliate sales. When you click to purchase a book or movie through BlueOrganizer and don’t have the affiliate field set, the commission goes to AdaptiveBlue. Amazon came out last week with a strong notice about people using their own affiliate code for sales. Not sure how that impacts how the affiliate codes work with BlueOrganizer.

Here is a simple animation showing how BlueOrganizer/Smartlinks work on Amazon, with an address and on a Web page: