Likaholix is a brand new web service that lets you share personal recommendations about virtually anything with the world. The tool lets you build a list of things you like and recommend with the help of a pre-populated database of items (think books, movies, tv shows, products, etc.) readily available and put together from sources from across the web.
For each of those items, Likaholix provides you with list of landing pages with descriptions, various topics centered around the items along with relevant image and video material so you’d have a central point to add information about stuff instead of having to gather it from multiple sources.
The service, which is sort of like a Twitter for personal recommendations, is still in private alpha, but we scored 200 invites for readers: simply head on over here and complete your details. The company is also giving away Amazon Kindle devices to 5 lucky beta testers.
I’ve embedded three screenshots below, showing the steps I took to add a like for the movie Office Space (which I honestly recommend to everyone). It’s a very easy process, and you can instantly push your personal recommendations to third-party social networking services like Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed.
It’s easy enough to add likes, and it can be a fun and engaging experience when you invite your Gmail contacts (the service also lets you connect your Facebook profile and invite your friends), but I’m missing an incentive that will make me want to go back to Likaholix every time I think of something I like. I’m also not sure about which business model the team intends build around the tool, although I suspect it would be easy enough for targeted advertising to be displayed on your profile pages based on the recommendations you’ve added.
Likaholix was founded by Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, a former Google Product Manager and Senior Staff Engineer, respectively. Both were among the key people behind GMail, Google Base, Google Docs, AdSense and Google Video.
looks like a cool service, lets see in a few months if it gets popular. I wonder why they did not make a FB app …
facebook connect will likely post automatically to my newsfeed based upon the permission i was required to give them. That will link back to their site and potentially be better for them than launching an app where the revenue potential is low.
technically this is very nice. Also I can see the appeal, but I think a location feature would be better. Like find people and recommendations in your area.
Hey Cease,
There is a location feature (still alpha) though. You can add a location to your like and we geo-code it. We also base your recommendations on the location data we get from your likes.
Still need to add location to search
Thanks
Bindu
dead slow !!!
Should be really quick now
Ahem…..dumb
Is it just me or is the Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area high on their own fumes when they create such silly startups? Have they learned nothing, that if there is no lasting value it will fail. Man, nothing about this intrigues me at all.
I signed up.. now i am testing it… looks nice.
@Ashu FB app is available, after signing up, it asks to connect to FB.
productwiki.com is a Canadian startup offering similar functionality.
in this category i think sfeed.com is the nicest!
1st impression – Account REQUIRED?
Why not searchable without an account? If the service is worth it then create an account to add your personal favorites. Do I HAVE to have an account to use Google?
“a brand new web service that lets you share personal recommendations about virtually anything with the world” wrong. With people who created an account.
With this model I can’t see this lasting long.
Paul G – We will definitely open it up so you don’t need an account to search it. We are still very early and are need to seed the content with likes before we can open it up.
This was really creepy for me b/c I proposed part of this to a bunch of my friends last week. I think the key is to make the sharing transparent and actionable, but also include soliciting advice. For example, when I add an item to my Amazon Wishlist, a movie to my Netflix Q, either auto or prompt me to share that with people (twitter, email, fb, myspace, etc). Don’t make me go to their likaholix site. If someone doesn’t want me to buy something they can stop me proactively before I purchase it or advise me on an alternative via a quick link in the activity stream. Make it actionable. My concept was “On my radar”, almost like a todo list of things that you might purchase or learn about. It could be a concept like 529 plans. I could see which 529’s my friends liked and which resources they learned about them etc (delicious, etc).
GoodRec is a much better product with a large product and review base. If i was going to actively use any reccomendation service it would be Goodrec
that’s my initial thought as well, but i will give this a try as well. from the screenshots, looks like Likeaholix would aggregate contents of a product from across the web. I don’t think that exists in goodrec, where the user have to YET AGAIN input information about the products (wiki style)
Its similar to likexo.com.
Also in private alpha.
Any reason I can’t dislike something? I found a lot of movies in the movies section that I would definitely dislike if there was a button for it.
Is it pronounced Lick-a-holix or Like-a-holix?
Like-a-holix
Got on the site, dabbled around, then came to my senses in what I was doing…wasting time. Maybe I wasnt using the sight “properly”. But found that with all the other voids we get pulled into, this is one I will keep out of.
Ugly layout.
Is there a feedbackaddress? Just had some bugs that I’d like to report.
There is a feedback link on the footer of the site. You can send it to feedback@likaholix.com
how is it different from digg or similar social news site toolbars?
Yes Ringtones,
Likaholix is a lot less about news and a lot more about the things you like
Thanks
Bindu
This sounds like what I wanted to create. Can I hire you guys to build the same thing for my website called shopperfriends.com?
I really love this one. Its quick to sort out things I like from several web resources. But I am still confused of its usability. May be a little more experimenting might get me going with it.
Overall a good work Bindu and Arvind!
Twitter for links? Hmm.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com