Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

Officially launched Tuesday, GetGlue.com represents a new dimension for semantic web start-up Adaptive Blue – and its users, too.

Glue is the semantic recognition technology for helping users find what they may like next in the way of movies, books, music and so on based on what they, their friends, and others using the social network already like. One big change is that now Glue is a destination, not just a browser plug-in, with a continuous stream of suggestions, recommendations and the like available right at the GetGlue.com home page. It’s integrated with Facebook and Twitter so the tastes of your other social network connections will be part of the real-time connections users can make for their own streams, too.

(View the Glue Promo from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo and read more on the jump.)

The new web service for Glue adds these interesting features to the social network as recommendation engine: Stickers and The Guru. These game-like elements, writes Fred Wilson, partner at Adaptive Blue investor Union Square Ventures, let users collect stickers to become the recognized expert on a particular topic. “As we've seen with foursquare, such gamelike features can really enhance the engagement levels of a web service,” Wilson writes.

Getting those stickers is going to take some work, but just what kind of work and how often is something AdaptiveBlue is keeping under wraps.

“Stickers and guru are a bit of a mystery ;)” AdaptiveBlue president and CEO Alex Iskold writes in an email. Some do seem pretty straightforward -- for instance, I’ve got the movie sticker already for liking 10 movies or stars, and the sweetly named Curious George sticker for checking out 10 user profiles I haven’t subscribed to yet.

But the site ‘fesses up that it’s not quite so clear how you can earn other stickers; a Surfs Up sticker, for instance, is awarded rather vaguely for “being all over the place.” Some of the stickers you earn you get to keep forever, and others just for a specific period of time, but you won’t know which until you start to lose some of them. Becoming a Guru is purposefully more mysterious, though it has something to do with taking the lead in the conversation in a particular area. As with The Highlander, there can be only one... .guru per topic, that is.

The figuring-it-out is all part of the game (and the ongoing play for engagement that Wilson notes). Gaming is indeed increasingly an important part of the social networking experience. While what Adaptive Blue is doing isn’t mySpace Mafia Wars, it’s adding a bit of a competitive aspect to the recommendation experience – and competition is ultimately what games from soccer to Monopoly are all about.