Sending stamps to Twitter/FB: Now more useful

Today we rolled out an update to the stamp page on the web, so when you send a stamp to Twitter or Facebook, it will now include more information from our database. We hope this helps your friends get the most from your recommendations.

For example, if you stamp a restaurant we will now add location information, a map, and a shortcut to OpenTable if it exists. Here’s one for Boxing Room in San Francisco.

And here’s an example of a stamp for The Artist, which automatically includes the film poster art, rating, synopsis and a link to get the tickets: 

With this update, sharing stamps on Twitter and Facebook should be a lot more useful to your friends.

In other news, we just got an N64 and it’s really sweet. 

-The Stamped Team

Stamping iOS Apps in v1.0.2 

One of the enhancements in the new Stamped v1.0.2 is full support for iOS apps. We noticed soon after launch that a lot of people wanted to stamp their favorite apps so we added iTunes apps to our database to make it as easy as possible. We also added a new details page specifically for apps so you can view more info and download them: 

     

Fully supporting apps continues our efforts to make Stamped as useful as possible. It’s our goal that every stamp from a friend is automatically enriched with information and ways to go do it. As a reminder, you can already get movie tickets, make reservations, order books, and download songs. Here are some examples:

Restaurants: 

     

Movies: 

     

Books: 

     

Albums: 

     

We hope you enjoy the new support for iOS apps, and as always, feel free to email us at everyone@stamped.com with any ideas, feedback or questions.

-The Stamped Team

Introducing Stamped

Today, after months of hard work, we’re very excited to announce that Stamped is now available in the App Store. It’s been a fun journey building this product, and we wanted to take a moment to explain why we made it.

We built Stamped because we think social products can be useful, as well as fun. We want Stamped to solve a problem, not just be another app that asks you to share for the sake of sharing.

The problem we’re trying to solve is noise. Specifically, there’s too much of it today when you try to discover something new online, whether it be a restaurant, book, movie, or song. What does 3 stars from 70 strangers mean? Is that good or bad? Can I trust this person’s opinion? Who is he/she? If you’ve ever asked these questions, you’ve experienced the weaknesses of current review and rating sites.

So people turn to their friends for recommendations, because they know they can trust them. They know who their friends are and they know what their recommendations mean. A foodie friend knows great restaurants, for instance, and a film-buff friend knows all the best movies.

But people exchange this incredibly valuable information in a fragmented, inefficient fashion. Long email threads, last-minute calls, mass text messages; these are all ways in which we use our friends to find something great, but the information is often not as usable or ever-lasting as it should be.

We believe that technology can and should make this better. There should be one platform for friends to share and discover what they like best, and it should be simple and fast to use. That’s what we’re building with Stamped.

Every decision we made when building Stamped was designed to make the platform as useful as possible, and to incentivize quality over quantity. If there were places where we could reduce the potential for noise, we tried to do so.

Here are some examples of how that mindset influenced the product:

- Everyone only gets 100 stamps to start, but can earn more if their friends like what they recommend. This makes a stamp valuable, and rewards people who share things that actually help their friends.

- The stamps pane is structured more like an inbox as opposed to a feed. It’s a timeless repository that you can search through, map, or filter by category. It’s designed so that the last 10 shared things aren’t the only things you can find.

- Nearly all stamps are connected to structured data from Google, iTunes, Fandango, and Amazon so you can bring up a map, preview a song, or even go buy a movie ticket.

These kinds of decisions have hopefully added up to make a product that is simple, fast and, most importantly, provides real value to your life. We hope you’ll turn to Stamped when asking yourself “What movie do I see next?” or “What restaurant should I go to tonight?” and discover useful inspiration.

This is our first release, so if you have ideas or suggestions, or just want to send an epic rant, don’t hesitate to email our team directly at everyone@stamped.com.

Now go put your stamp of approval on the world!

(And download the free app at stamped.com/download.)

- The Stamped team

Hello world (almost)…

We are working on something new, and are getting ready for our launch. Sit tight for an exciting announcement from the Stamped team.