Anybody who’s anybody in the social software scene knows about del.icio.us. And anybody who knows del.icio.us has probably see the incredibly popular link to grat.uito.us. Most of the time when I see new social software thingies I say “wow, that’s neat”. Then I might use it a little, and think of all the possibilities for it. But overall none of them really keep me using them for extended periods of time. Orkut had a stranglehold at first, but it faded fast. Facebook was extremely interesting for about two days, then it fell of the chart. del.icio.us gets extremely light usage over long periods of time, at least from me. I subscribe to the popular and ritscc RSS feeds from del.icio.us, but I rarely post something there.
My feeling is that grat.uito.us is holding my interest more than most. I’ve been using it for at least a week without signs of slowing, so I think it is worthy of a blog post. Basically grat.uito.us is a social wish list. I already used some web based wish lists from Amazon, Nintendo and Newegg, but those have more specific uses. The Nintendo one is restricted only to things listed in the Nintendo database, so I use it mostly to keep track of which games are coming out soon. The Newegg one I use as a place to store products when I’m building PCs. And the Amazon one I haven’t used in years. grat.uito.us, however, lets me add things from any site anywhere. And it lets me share the wish list very easily with others. Here is my wishlist.
But the best part about grat.uito.us, and the part I think that keeps me using it, is the bookmarklet. I’ve known about bookmarklets for a long while now, and have found them to be rather interesting. But not until now have I actually marked one and used it often. The grat.uito.us bookmarklet allows me, while visiting any site, to add that page as a wish to my list. So if I’m browsing Newegg and I find a motherboard of awesome I go up to my personal tool-bar and click on “Add Wish”. This takes me straight to grat.uito.us and fills in portions of the form for adding the wish depending on the current page I was just on. The technology isn’t perfect yet, but its a beta.
What I find it really useful for is that I can use it to keep track of all sorts of things an not just stuff I want people to buy me. You can see I’ve added ‘World Peace’ and ‘Freedom’ to my list. Also, I just realized this is perfect for wedding registrations. Instead of the olden days where you had to register at a particular store, thus giving them a shitload of business and limiting your own selection, you can now make a wedding registration on grat.uito.us and you can select goods from across the net. Your guests who are buying gifts can also save money buy combining grat.uito.us with Froogle or some such. grat.uito.us also works well when combined with blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo. Those types of blogs tend to just list new products. And if I were to comment on those products by making del.icio.us links or writing about them in my own blog it wouldn’t have the desired effect. But listing those technological goodies in my grat.uito.us list is a way where I can say “I want this” and “check this thing out” without extra effort and in a more semantically correct way.
So unless you are a poor person or a monk who has cast away all personal property, grat.uito.us is pretty freaking great.
