Yet another micro-reviews service: Stamped
This is actually a good app, but do we need another one of these?
"The problem we're trying to solve is noise," the Stamped blog says to announce its new mobile app that lets users create quick recommendations to the products and services they like.
The problem that Stamped is not solving, unfortunately, is the noise of all the reviews and check-in sites out there. Sure, they're all different. First we had Yelp and Foursquare and Facebook. Recently, Oink came along. It looks great, is run by a tech celebrity, and lets you review and compare menu items instead of restaurants. I believe it has seized the high ground in this market, at least for this month. Then there's Wikets, which adds commerce. It's also good, but I have no idea how it will stand out.
Into this morass we can now add this new app, Stamped, which has the unique feature of giving users only 100 "stamps" of approval to dole out to their favorite venues or products before the service shuts them up. Unless, that is, their Stamp-using friends like their stamps, since that earns users the right to stamp more stuff.
In a vacuum (a world without Oink, Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare, Nosh, etc.), I would say this about Stamped: It is gorgeous. It has strong commerce links. Its social features are easy to use (it's easy to find your Stamped-using friends by letting the app cross-reference against your iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook contacts). You easily add other users' stamped items to your to-do list. Stamped also streamlines leaving a review: Stamps are binary. You stamp what you like, and ignore the rest. There are no star ratings, and no nuance. You can add text to a stamp, or a picture, but neither are required.
Stamped is a good little app. But it's too similar to too many other good little apps to be important. It's not clear to me, yet, why I should leave my opinion on this site instead of the others.