riffs: All Your Social Reviewing in One Place
by
on July 09, 2007,
I started to get social networking fatigue a long time ago, yet I have friends who keep asking me to sign up for more sites. They want to know what movies I like on Blockbuster or Netflix. And sure, there's I Heart Movies, but then you also get questions about what software you recommend. What your latest purchases are on iTunes. And your del.icio.us bookmarks. And your book recommendations. And I no longer remember where I have accounts nor what I'm supposed to recommend there.
Enter riffs, a service for people like me who are as sick of having 467 social recommendation sites as they are of having to use every IM client out there to keep up with everyone. Using a similar Javascript-y interface that many of the social polling sites use, you can vote on absolutely anything from the latest White Stripes album to a hammer. Vote thumbs up or thumbs down on absolutely anything; if it isn't already in the riffs database, you can add it yourself, because the whole site is really a very pretty wiki. Add your riffs, which expand on your vote, tag items for social searching, let riffs search your recent iTunes playlist and make purchase recommendations, chat about favorites with other like-minded users; they've covered just about any base you could think of.
If there was some sort of API that connected with services like Netflix and Amazon and anywhere else I might be reviewing my purchases? I could see myself living on riffs, I can even include my riffs on my blog as soon as I figure out exactly what they want from me, eliminating the need for 64 widgets to share what I'm reading or listening to in my sidebar. I couldn't get riffs to connect to my blog, but once I do, I may just give up talking to friends and family on the phone or in person. They can read my blog and check my riffs if they need to know what I'm up to.
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beauty_inside
Chris
Svetlana Gladkova
Michael Fidler 
jiri
You like the interface? Really? I kind of hate it.
I’m all about fast and easy to use. The faster you can get started and keep going (in this case voting), the more likely you are going to be to input more data, which is what makes these things more relevant. Geni is the perfect cast study (and other companies would be wise to look at their model). Not only is it super-fast and very easy to get started, but the invite process is literally embedded in what you are already doing. Once you enter a family member’s email, you have to uncheck to NOT invite them, and it doesn’t require any additional work by the person adding that individual to the tree. It’s genius, and it’s why Geni has grown so quickly.
They could do with some “what the hell is this site about?” verbage, as I found it very confusing and if I hadn’t come in through your review I would have been totally lost.
That I agree with. If you don’t spend as much time as I do on these sites, I can see how easily you could get lost. I’ve been blogging for five years and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what they are asking for with “ATOM entry point” so I can add my riffs to my blog.