After learning of the My Data is My Data plugin for warding of third party queries for the Facebook Beacon program, I wondered to myself for the umpteenth time, "why has it taken so long for Facebook to find a better way?" In chatting with Gordon Gould, founder of ThisNext, about the product review and recommendation service as well as his new Facebook app (officially launched today), I thought: "this could help move everyone towards a happy medium, given the underlying concept of Facebook Beacon."
ThisNext's new Facebook app is called iWant, and it lets you leverage your personal social graph for making your wishlist become a reality. It is, in fact, a direct request form of a recommendation tool. Anyone with the app can submit a request to other app users, and anyone can submit a recommendation. This isn't explicitly connected to your ThisNext account, though I think including your existing ThisNext items could be an easy way to access potential recommendations that you give to other app users.
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When giving a recommendation, however, it's quite simple to do a search of ThisNext's database or view suggested items from its database in order to easily add an item. Alternatively, you can simply submit the URL. This feature works in the same way that it does on ThisNext. What I like about it is that even if you don't know the other people using the iWant app, you can find trusted users with similar tastes.