Amplify, a service for gathering and sharing clips from the Web, has added the ability to subscribe to the clippings of others in a fashion very similar to Twitter’s asynchronous following. Amplify is tailored to both public sharing, publishing to a group, or private collection of material; the service occupies an interesting space somewhere between a social network, an enterprise app, and social bookmarking.
With a dead simple interface for selecting text and images from the Web, you’ve long been able to publish your clips to both Twitter and Facebook. But until now, there was no way to get a stream of clips from those you follow directly within Amplify.
Amplify was created by the team by Clipmarks, and is both a conceptual extension of that service and an entirely new direction. Run on WordPress MU, it’s one of the easiest ways available to clip and publish content you find valuable; the only real limitation is that clipping is performed through a Firefox add-on.
The new features are primarily suited to public sharing of your clips, especially with Twitter OAuth login and friend importing. But Amplify still lacks some functionality required for a booming social network, such as blocking. In that sense, its private group option is what may eventually become the primary driver for the business; early testing with enterprises and in government has borne this out to some extent.
One of the primary social functions of networks like Twitter and Facebook is information sharing, especially from Web-based references. If you’re a rabid link-sharer on your preferred platform, Amplify is likely to be a tool that will make your life significantly easier. The new ability to aggregate sources from trusted fellow Amplifiers only adds to the utility of the site.
