Hate It or Like It, Likaholix Is Here

Likaholix is a service that allows you to find things you like and share them with your friends. It automatically crawls the net to find movies, music, books and other things that you may find interesting.  The service was started by a couple of ex-Googlers (Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan).

What It Does

Keeping with the design principles of other Google-related web apps, the interface of Likaholix is simple and clean. You simply search for what you might like and click the Like button once you’ve found it. You also have the option to add a note telling why you liked something.

If you have no idea what you are looking for, Likaholix provides a few ways to help you out:

• You have a Recommended page that lists things you might want to like based on items, people and topics you like
• You’re also given a list of items that nobody has liked yet, in case you’d like to like them
• You can also just see what your friends have liked

Why You Need This

Many other bloggers have covered Likaholix, but some of them seem to be missing the point. A lot of people feel like we don’t need a service where you just like stuff. You can already like and favorite things on FriendFeed, Facebook, and even Twitter. They don’t feel that Likaholix is going to last and have no clue how it will keep people interested.

I think Likaholix and Plinky (previously covered here) have a lot in common. Not only were both started by ex-Googlers, but they both help you to generate content. Many people that use social media, especially those new to it, have no clue what to say or what to write. Likaholix provides a solution to this problem. It automatically posts your likes to Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. I’m sure we will see integration with more services in the future.

Likaholix is also useful as a place to find recommendations. You can easily tell what your friends like, which provides you with a trusted recommendation and possibly an entire discussion thread detailing why people like something. The next time you’re looking for feedback on a major purchase or you can’t figure out which brand of laptop you should buy, you might appreciate having access to a database full of stuff that people you like…like.

Likaholix is currently in beta, but you should be able to snag an invite and more info on Likaholix from one these other posts:

• “Liking,” the hot social trend, continues with Likaholix
• Ex-Googlers Launch Likaholix, a Curated Web Startup
• Likaholix Launches Recommendation Engine Based On Social “Liking”