Streakr, a site that in private testing had a lot of buzz (we’ve covered it twice previously) launched in beta today.
Streakr is pitched as follows:
Streakr brings users the best of the web. They simply download a ‘discovery’ bar onto their browsers which, at the touch of a button, finds dozens of new websites that match their interests. They can then rate the sites they like and dislike by stamping them with a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ icon. Once selected, the URLs are saved onto their personal profile page and indexed for future reference. The sites, which users can also review, can then be shared with fellow Streakrs via the social network.
The politest way of describing Streakr: MySpace and StumbleUpon got together and had a learning impaired child.
When first mentioned in March, Streakr was suppose to be a site with “attitude”, and yet the only attitude Streakr delivers is a social network that looks nearly identical to MySpace (complete with ugly profile pages) but lacks nearly all the features. Then there is the site surfing/ toolbar feature that is nothing more than a StumbleUpon clone. Users are also given the ability to search for friends on other social networking sites, however why someone would search for friends on other sites via Streakr and not Google, or the social networking sites themselves was not explained and there is no aggregation tools that could make this an interesting feature.
To be fair it’s only a beta launch, so perhaps Streakr will deliver a more compelling product in the future, but clearly the hype had no place in reality. If you’ve always wanted to be part of a social network built around a StumpleUpon style service, you might find some enjoyment from Streakr, for the rest of us; there is not a lot to see.
First to comment? Perhaps…Anyways, I love StumbleUpon, and while Streakr sounds interesting, I think StumbleUpon already has social networking features – blogging, friendships, private messaging, etc.
Seems like Streakr is way behind in the game.
Looks pretty lame. Do we really need another one of these. I think we’re all getting fatigue. *lame*
why would they name it streakr? how many more sites like this are we gonna get, if this site was launched, say, five years ago, maybe it’d have a point, but we’ve got plenty of sites like this…
All I can think of is Wil Farrell from Old School running down the street. “were going streaking”.
Hey Duncan – Do u call the design in the profile UGLY or the content as UGLY ???? ….. I just checked out the site – the deign is really mind blowing and fantastic …. I hav infact bookmarked the site , to make designs like this in future …. they r really different and cool ….. I thnk u r a man – who likes only plain / boring / normal / Blue designs ……
Sounds bad… but how much traffic could the streakr toolbar drive?
I agree with K.Kaviraj it looks great…you’re right not much pushing the envelope tech wise, but with that design the kids will love it…
K.Kavairaj,
I was referring specifically to some of the user profile sites, not the main site itself. I agree, the design aesthetics of the front pages and features aren’t bad…although I’m not as in love with it as you obviously are
StumbleUpon is StumbleUpon+MySpace.
So Streakr is actually just StumbleUpon…
doesn’t sound so promising.
“To be fair …”
HAHAHA ! that’s new for sure !
Techcrunch: The only site where you can read three successive posts about a company the writers don’t even like.
ditto
Surely there are more interesting companies to review than the ones that even you guys think are lame
terrible site; hope VC’s learn their lesson (or maybe not )lol
That is kind of crazy: posting three articles about a site you don’t even like. The old addage, “There’s no such thing as bad press”, applies even more to the web than other mediums. Nevertheless, I did get a kick out of this article, especially the comment, “The politest way of describing Streakr: MySpace and StumbleUpon got together and had a learning impaired child.” I got the mental image and everything.