Share Your Web…with Your Friends
May 11, 2007 by Mark Evans
Filed under Business
If Twitter has become all the rage to broadcast what you’re doing and where you’re doing it, I guess a service that lets your friends and family see what you’re doing on the Web has the potential to be a hit with many people. Ottawa-based Cluztr is hoping to jump on the “hey, look what I’m doing” phenomena with a free browser add-on (an “extension” for Firefox users) that lets you share your Web browsing with friends in real-time. Cluztr works by creating a detailed profile of each user’s Web activity by tagging the sites and pages someone visits. This data is displayed on a user’s profile page, as well as in a “community” page where the activity of all Cluztr users are displayed.
“Cluztr is a collection of browser histories – yours, your friends’ and everyone else’s,” said Cluztr founder Jon Cianciullo “This tells users what people, including their friends, are paying attention to right at that moment, so there’s a good chance you will want to check it out for yourself.”
Cluztr strikes me as a collaboration tool within the same social discovery family as del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Maybe this is something Facebook should snap up or, at least, copy. You can check out Cluztr’s press release.
Update: Cluztr must have struck a chord because its press release was picked up by TechCrunch.
mark, don’t you think that’s a bit creepy? for my sense that’s way too much like big brother is watching.
Definitely. I’m not keen at all about anyone knowing where I surf, including Google. I also backed away from MyBlogLog because it displays your photo when you visit someone else’s site!
exactly. well, i use gmail and i am a fan of it, regardless the huge downsides. what do you think of googleanalytics though? everybody hypes it, i see it as a big spy tool for google.
Privacy will always be a concern, for some, not everyone.
Web behavior is moving in a direction where people are more willing to give us aspects of their privacy to get services in return.
But to many people it’s still like getting into a pool of cold water, some people jump right in, others take a while. To each their own, and Cluztr facilitates that.
Clickstreams can be set to public or private, where only your friends can view it. Additionally, other features allow users to distill their clickstreams by tagging sites or pages as “private”. This effectively gives users full control over their own clickstreams, they want to broadcast.