Fast Forward is a Firefox add-on that provides recommendations on the similar web pages that are most visited by readers, who visited the current web page you are in.
As they claim on their add-on page:
It’s like Amazon recommendations for webpages. “People who viewed this page also viewed this next…”
At all times, the Fast Forward button (that comes up on your Firefox toolbar once installed) answers the question – “Where do people go after they view this page?”. Unlike StumbleUpon where people give “thumbs up” to their favorite pages, Fast Forward passively collects information on the browsing patterns (of course with your consent at the setup time).
Following is the comparison with StumbleUpon, in their own terms:
Why use FastForward compared to StumbleUpon?
- Page Relevance – We give relevant results based on the page you are on, it isn’t something random.
- No Registration. We don’t ask for any personal information to use the service.
- Only 1 button – We only add 1 small FastForward button, not a toolbar.
Also, Fast Forward is supposed to work the best with News sites, Tech Blogs and Youtube, while providing recommendations.
Here is a snapshot on the recommendations provided, when I tried to view ReadWriteWeb:
It’s kinda accurate and provides some meaningful recommendations. Also, if you choose to “Preload” recommendations during the first use, then the response time is pretty fast.
But, a couple of problem areas in my view are:
- Privacy of Information as the tool passively collects data
- A visit to a web page doesn’t mean it deserves a “thumbs up”. But when it comes to about 500 page visits, then I think it is reasonable
If you like to try this, then grab it right away from the Firefox add-ons page – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9509
Reviews on this product on the following sites:
TechCrunch, Search Engine Journal
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Article by Ashwin Chandrasekaran
Founder of Thoughts Unlimited. Loves Technology, Mobile Web, Blogging and Internet Marketing. Runs another Blog on Web Business and Internet Marketing at Power Web Business
Ashwin has written 175 awesome articles.
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