Let me kick off this review by pointing to the ‘?’ in the title, as I do not intend to make the assertion that this fledgeling start-up can compete with the likes of StumbleUpon (yet), but on first glance at streakr.com, the comparison is inevitable.

Everything, from the toolbar to the site itself just shouts “we want a piece of SU’s meaty pie” and sets about mimicking virtually every aspect of it like there’s no tomorrow, and possibly for this site at least, that may turn out to be true.

You see, I like nothing better than to spot up-and-coming fresh ideas born out of the tea-drenched UK soil, instead of the over funded, often soul-less efforts from silicon valley, but the truth is, streakr has some problems. Problems that would have had me delay this review, had I not found the site from a google ad, which usually tells me the site is ready in the eyes of its founders, and therefore fair game…

Let me start on the positives; The layout is nice and simple, easy to navigate and the ajax-powered member search has some nice features such as a slider-bar for searching by age range. The overall feel of the site is funky and has real character, and signup is quick and easy.

The negatives all point to the fact that streakr just seems to have launched too early. The browser toolbar is almost identical to that of StumbleUpon, except it dominates the browser with huge buttons, which makes me want to burn people, then uninstall it. Seriously, few sites can get away with taking up a whole row on the browser toolbar, and if you do.. you’d better be sure it’s useful. Which brings me nicely onto my next point…

Clicking the ‘browse’ button loads up a random page a-la StumbleUpon, except the content it brings up is about 2 years old, giving no incentive or compulsion to click, and upon submitting this blog (SE), I recieved roughly.. 0 visitors from streakr, so there is no incentive to add content either.

The biggest problem I had with this site though, is the frequent (and I mean frequent) page-load errors on the main site, which again, triggered my urge to burn people (I’m seeking help).

I want this startup to succeed but until these issues are resolved, streakr may well be carried off the pitch for indecent exposure.

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