GrazeIt Helps You Share and Spread the Web

GrazeIt is a service that helps you share content with friends and driving traffic where you need it. Of course, this seems like something you’ve seen before, but GrazeIt has an interesting combination of features that make it worth a look if you want to add a new dimension to your browsing.

Browsing the Web

As you browse the web and consume content, you sometimes run into dead ends. You’ve found an awesome new service or read a great article, but what then? More often than not, we dump it off into some other social network and then go there to see if our friends bothered to respond to it. GrazeIt allows you to continue your journey, allowing you to see what your friends thought about the page and where they think you should go next. Recommendations appear directly on the page with their handy-dandy Firefox plugin, so jumping to the next thing is easy.

Driving Traffic

This is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. Just as you can create a “graze” from something you find on the web, you can also create a graze of your own content. Once you have done that, you can spread the graze around the web and give others a pointer back to your relevant content.

Let’s say you’ve written a post on your blog about a new Eminem album you just listened to. Your blog isn’t about Eminem and it’s not even about music but you’d love Eminem fans to read your comments about their idol. Using GRAZEit you’d create a graze and then spread it to all the relevant pages you can think of. The next time a GRAZEit user goes to Amazon’s page to look at details of this album they’ll see your graze and possibly become the next visitor to your blog.

How It Works

GrazeIt is very simple to use. You can either install the Firefox plugin or grab the GrazeIt bookmarklet. When you find a site you like, click Graze This. Set up a description, tags, type, images, and category. Most of these will be automatically filled in for you. When you’re done, you can save your graze for later, or hit Next to spread it immediately. In either case, your graze shows up on your profile for your friends on the network to see.

Creating a graze is probably what most of us are used to when it comes to sharing things on the web. Whether it’s with something like Amplify, Posterous, or Facebook, you share the link and then hope your friends find it and discuss it. Spreading your graze adds a new dimension where you can add a link to your graze on other related websites.

GrazeIt is like a cross between StumbleUpon and Google Sidewiki. The plugin works flawlessly in Firefox and is also available for Internet Explorer. I did have problems with the bookmarklet in Google Chrome, preventing me from actually creating or spreading grazes, so your mileage may vary. They are currently in private beta, so you need an invite to gain access. It doesn’t seem that current users are limited in how many invites they can give, so ask around and you should be all set.

What do you think about GrazeIt?

(props to Faydra Deon for the heads up)

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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