Fifteen years ago, the internet was made of building blocks that creative people could connect to make neat things. XML and RSS feeds, Yahoo Pipes, and apps you could connect with your social media graph were all part of that world. This was the same era when Netflix would mail DVDs. Netflix also let you rate every movie from one to five stars, creating recommendations that were actually amazing. I remember the day Netflix changed to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down system and destroyed their recommendation engine.
In those days, the idea of “connecting with people” with similar tastes was still fresh, and finding communities was exciting. Foursquare allowed people to check into places and unlock special deals. Untappd let you check into your beers. The Mermaid Oyster Restaurant in New York had an oyster check-in app.
There were three tools, in particular, that I enjoyed for connecting my viewing habits with my social graph: one was Miso, another was GetGlue, and a third was IntoNow. Miso lasted for about two years. Same with GetGlue. IntoNow was acquired by Yahoo and may or may not be living on behind the scenes as part of their automatic content recognition software. Maybe it’s hanging out in the codebase in a cage beside Flurry, an amazing old-school analytics company acquired by Yahoo. Tumblr anyone?
I still think social discovery is a really fun concept. I suppose our “AI best friend” will simply fill that role moving forward?
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