After a pretty brief beta test, Thoof is now live. I was able to secure a beta test account and used it a bit during the test. I even submitted a story, which was actually a link to the blog entry where I wrote about Thoof. Through my website tracking I was even able to see that some people read the blog entry after clicking on the link on Thoof. I went back to my story submission to see if it showed me how popular it was, or how many people read it. But I couldn’t find a way to get that information. But then again that’s more Digg-like thinking and this is a recommendation engine. So it’s not about quantity but quality, right?

You can click on this tumbnail image to see a screenshot of my main Thoof page. One thing I find interesting is that when you click on a story link it opens up the story in a new window that is underneath the Thoof window. Kind of helpful I think, but you have to go click on that new popunder window to read the story you are interested in. This could be useful if you are clicking on several stories, and then want to go read them. It just makes me wonder what the use case is behind this interface decision. Usually popunders are only for advertisements.