Riffs is Snarkilicious!

Riffs, at www.riffs.com, is a site for anyone who enjoys rating, tagging, and commenting on a cross-section of (mainly American) culture. It's basically a playground for opinionated snark lovers, so I enjoyed it a lot!

Riffs invites you to do a variety of things. At its most simple level, it provides a basic 'thumbs up/thumbs down' Siskel-and-Ebert-meets-"Gladiator" approach to rating thumbnails representing everthing from Hillary Clinton to Diet Coke to Textbooks to Japan, gauges your response, and provides a percentage tally of how many people think similarly. Cool enough. But then, it invites you to add your comment on the item, or respond and bookmark the comments of others. And it tracks other 'recommenders' with similar interests. So, while you were sitting there in all your snarky glory, rating, commenting, and responding, Riffs has neatly tracked where you fit in its current community, who else's opinions you might enjoy hearing, and what other items you might be interested in reading, hearing, trying, or buying.

Then add this neat feature - which could use some tweak, but is still cool: you can give Riffs access to your iTunes library. It will then compile a suggested list of music, in iTunes. At that point, you can head over to the iTunes store, hear the sample, and purchase it if you like. Riffs will update the list daily, based on changes to your library, if you prefer. You can also import your del.icio.us tags, and you can add websites to your Riffs page. All good innovations that integrate current social software with Riffs.

The only issue I have right now is depth. It seems like a new service, so there aren't as many thumbnails, opinions, and users as you would like - but that will change as the word spreads. And, I would definitely continue to use Riffs for music updates, community recommendations, new products, and commentary. The other night I found a new gadget on Riffs: an iPod shuffle case that doubles as a keychain/bottle opener. Yes, trendykewl, but it also provoked some thought. Drinking-- car keys-- iPod? Hmm. My Riffs comment:"iPod responsibly."