Glue is a browser-based social network that connects friends around things they visit online. Glue appears on popular sites like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yahoo! Finance, Wine.com, Citysearch and many more, revealing friends and other Glue users interested in the same thing around the web.
Today, we are announcing the public availability of Glue API. The API enables 3rd party developers to build Glue applications, that leverage the way people connect with things around the web. The applications can leverage information from individual users as well as a rich set of aggregate popularity information.
The API is entirely REST based and relies on HTTP authentication. The developers need a Glue account to start using the API, and don’t need to request any special keys. Currently the API is free and limited to 5,000 calls per day. For more usage developers should email [email protected].
Expanding Semantic Web API Family
Glue API joins the growing family of Semantic Web APIs. Previously, OpenCalais from Reuters enabled developers to automatically identify People, Places, Companies, etc. inside unstructured text. Zemanta API,similar in spirit, automatically identifies appropriate tags as well as related content around the web. Dapper API enabled developers to define the rules for extracting structured content out of the web pages. Freebase and Evri API’s enable developers to access dictionary topics in a structured way and to tap into relationships between the concepts.
Glue API compliments the existing Semantic Web API family in two important ways. First, it brings the exciting social dimension to the equation, revealing how people connect around things and concepts instead of pages. Secondly, Glue enables developers to get meta data and related links for books, music, movies, video games, topics, stocks, stars, artists, wine from hundreds of popular sites, turning these sites into databases.
Glue API features:
1. Individual Attention

• Access user lifestream

For each user get the lists of recent books, music, movies and other things they are interested in.

• User Profiles

Rich profiles with list of likes, claimed services as well as the lists of friends and followers.

• Send in updates

Post visits, likes, comments and replies on behalf of Glue users from your application.
2. Social Attention

• Find people around things

For any book, movie or an album lookup users interested in it.
3. Aggregate Attention

• Get Popular Lists

Get the lists of popular books, movies, music – made fresh daily. Also, get top Glue users by category.

• Stream Glue Activity

Get an instant stream of Glue activity to see what books, movies, and albums users are checking out right now.
4.  Object Meta data

• Web-wide meta data

Send in a link to an object on a Glue site and get back structured information about it.

• Object index

Send in an object key and get back the list of links to this object on popular sites.
 
Sample Applications Built on Glue API
Stream
Quilt
Unhub Movies
Quiz
Visualizer
 
About Glue Technology
Beneath Glue is a powerful semantic engine that automatically recognizes books, music, movies, video games, stocks, wine, artists, movie stars on hundreds of popular web sites. Glue is able to identify that different pages are actually about the same object. By using unique object keys across different sites, Glue connects friends around things they are interested in.
To recognize objects across different sites Glue relies on APIs from Amazon, Netflix, Last.fm as well as home grown recognition algorithms. Glue’s database consists of tens of millions of objects and is constantly growing as users discover new things online.
 
Glue FAQ
1.  What things/sites does Glue work on?
This release of Glue automatically recognizes books, movies, music, artists, stars, stocks, restaurants and wine on hundreds of popular sites around the web. Glue works on Amazon, Netflix, Last.fm, Rhapsody, IMDB, Google Finance, Citysearch, Wine.com just to name a few. Here is a full list of Glue supported sites.
2.  How does Glue recognize things?
Glue uses top-down semantic recognition technology to identify everyday things in pages around the web. A mix of client-side and server-side algorithms are used to create a unique key that correlates, for example, a book on Amazon as the same book on Barnes and Noble and other book sites. Using this approach Glue rewires the web of pages into the web of things and facilitates a new way for people to connect.
3.  How does Glue handle privacy and data security?
AdaptiveBlue is committed to privacy and puts the users in control of their data. Glue only focuses on things like books, music and movies, it is not active on other pages. The user information is stored securely using Amazon S3 and SimpleDB – popular and trusted Amazon Web Services. The users own their information and are able, at any time, to delete it from the system. AdaptiveBlue does not sell personal or aggregate information about the system. For more on this topic, please visit our Privacy Policy page.
4.  How does Glue leverage the existing Social Graph?
Glue enable users to automatically connect with their Twitter and Facebook friends. The user can choose to automatically sync her friends from other social networks. So when new friend joins Glue or new relationship is created on Facebook or Twitter there is a mirror relationship in Glue.