Sticky Just Got Stickier

Along with a tune up and a face lift, the latest release of Glue boasts some new features that heavy social media users are really going to find useful.

If you haven’t heard of Glue, it’s a browser add-on that allows you to carry your social network with you as you browse around the web and do a whole host of really cool things with social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Digg etc. Like Firebug or del.icio.us, it’s become an indispensable part of my browsing toolkit. I use it multiple times a day to quickly share articles and books I read, music I’m listening to, restaurant reviews I write etc. to Twitter and Facebook as I’m browsing. There’s a lot of power packed into this little add-on and, because it allows you to do so many things on so many platforms, it’s replaced quite a few of my single purpose add-ons. For it’s integration with Twitter and Facebook alone it’s worth installing, but the new social features they’ve added today are worthy of applause.

A Quick List Of What’s New

• Suggestions As You Browse - If you like the concept and implementation of Amazon’s “users also bought” lists when you’re surfing books, movies, music etc, you’ll love this new feature. With the click of a button you can tell Glue you “like” something and Glue uses Amazon’s algorithms (plus some sweet magic of their own) to surface suggestions for these types of objects wherever you surf. The suggestions get better the more you surf and Glue learns your tastes. I’ve been using Glue for months now and the book and movie suggestions I’ve seen today are pretty accurate.
• Facebook Integration - Not only can you automatically share what you think about books, movies, wines, reviews etc with your friends straight to your Facebook wall, now you can configure Glue to auto-update your news feed with the stuff that you like without having to log in over and over. With just a couple of clicks as you browse straight from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu (or wherever you might be) you can update Facebook. Heavy Facebook users will really appreciate this.  It saves a ton of time.
• Find Out About Stuff By Pinging Your Friends – I really appreciated this feature. Ever surf to find out about a movie you’re thinking of seeing, or a book your thinking of reading (etc)? I do it all the time. The first thing you want to do is ask your friends – hey! Has anyone seen/read/tried this? Now you can do that with Twitter and/or Facebook the second you feel the urge, straight from the page you’re looking at.

The things I’ve highlighted here are just a few of the new features that I’ve found useful. Techcrunch covered the upgrade, and there’s a lengthy post with all the details on the AdaptiveBlue blog if you really want to review what’s new before you try it out…but who reads specs and product manuals these days? The add-on is free and it’s available for Internet Explorer and Firefox….just give it whirl. The add-on is simple and intuitive, and you’ll be able to see how powerful it is within minutes…a simple right click on any page will get you quick access to the whole toolkit under “page actions”.

Oh yeah, if you’re already on Glue and wanna chat books, movies and wine, come find me. I’ll see you around the web.