Ms. Mayer with Team Stamped (Photo: Instagram)

This is about as close as Marissa Mayer has come to being featured in an episode of Entourage. Today, word leaked that the new Yahoo CEO made her first acquisition--or acqui-hire, depending on who you ask. Ms. Mayer has purchased Stamped, a New York City-based recommendations app cofounded by two fellow Xooglers. Stamped cofounder Robby Stein worked closely with Ms. Mayer when the two were both still employed by GOOG.

Mashable says Stamped's team, five of whom are former Google employees, will be joining "a new mobile product team to be established in New York under the leadership of Stamped’s three co-founders." In a blog post published to the Stamped site, the team confirmed that they will be "discontinuing the Stamped product" but are working on a solution for users to export their data from the app.

Business Insider reports that the deal was closed for a ''a nice size," but nothing too hefty. That should mean some extra spending money for a group of people who have no need for it: Stamped's celebrity investors.

Back in July, when Stamped decided to pivot from a ratings app into a recommendations app--the company brought on a slew of celebrity investors like Justin Bieber, his manager Scooter Braun, Ellen Degeneres, and Ryan Seacrest--alongside established players like Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures. (Stamped wasn't the only startup to give up on trying to rate things: Kevin Rose's Oink shut down in March.)

Stamped is bright, sleek-looking, and easy-to-use, but around the time of the revamp, we wondered whether it would be able to get any traction in recommendations--even with Biebs filming videos about his favorite things. The gamble may not have worked as intended. Mashable notes both the iPhone and web app will be "discontinued by the end of the year," with the team's talents now geared toward helping Yahoo transform from a dotcom relic into a mobile company.

For some insight into how celebrity tech investments work, check out The New Yorker's profile of Scooter Braun, who had invested in ten startups, including Uber, Stamped, and Spotify, when the article was published in September.

"Cross-promotion is all part of the interdependent business culture that Braun has created. For instance, he cuts Bieber in on many of his tech investments. Sometimes he has Bieber put money into a start-up company directly; sometimes he offers to have him promote a product in return for equity. “If it makes sense for Justin’s brand, I show it to him,” Braun said. (He has a similar relationship with his other artists, and with Ellen DeGeneres, with whom he has shared tech-investing tips: “She put me onto something, and I put her onto something.”)"

(Photo: Instagram)

Sometimes the hardest question to get a founder to answer is why anyone would regularly use their app. That's particularly true for startups that solve a problem users don't actually have.

But often, the pitch for why X app is better at rating, or recommendations, or social planning relies on the assumption that it will be populated by users just dying to share their personal tastes or make plans  . . . using an app that's on screen four of their smartphone, right next to Draw Something.

That's been the problem with Stamped, a remarkably sleek ratings and recommendations app launched by Xooglers last November that allows users to give their "stamp" of approval to books, songs, restaurant recommendations, you name it.

Back then, we said, "Until we see how many 'friends' opt in, it will be hard to tell if Stamped is a signal, or adding to the noise." And unlike the steady ping of notifications for friends joining Instagram or Pinterest, not many have--and certain few outside the tech world.

That lack of engagement in Stamped, however, didn't stop a stream of celebrity investors including Justin Bieber, Ellen Degeneres, Ryan Seacrest, and Bieber's manager Scooter Braun, from plunking down an unspecified amount in the startup. The New York Times Co. and Columbia Records also went in. As did Eric Schmidt through TomorrowVentures, CrunchFund, and Metamorphic Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to $3 million.

The founders seem to be aware of the problem, which is why they're revamping the entire project, ostensibly moving away from their competition. "We’re a way to share your favorite things," cofounder and CEO Robby Stein told TechCrunch. In version 2.0, social discovery--rather than rating--is paramount. There's a section called The Guide to let you find new things to eat, watch, read, drink, etc. as recommended by the people you follow.

To that end, the company has integrated services like iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and OpenTable, so you can start acting on the "stamps" that interest you. It's also now available on the web, instead of just mobile. "It should be more like Pinterest and less like Yelp, they determined," Business Insider said of the founders.

TechCrunch noted:

For celebrity watchers, there’s an obvious draw to the new Stamped (what does Bieber like?), and for others, it may be about seeing what books NYT recommends, perhaps. But where Stamped still needs work is helping regular users build up their own collections of things – something that, while easy enough to do, can still feel like a bit of work to do at scale, in order to really create a holistic picture of your interests.

Since the revamp, Mr. Bieber has "stamped" four different things on the app, all of which he mentioned in the charming promotional video below. (Is that Selena Gomez we hear laughing in the background?) For some context, Lance Armstrong seems similarly smitten with his investment, the social networking app Mobli, whereas his fellow investor Leonardo DiCaprio is a little more blazay blah.)

I really like the idea of Stamped, and its design, but stopped checking when it failed to get traction. I hope they can get better engagement in the new framework and convince its celebrity investors to actually use it. Otherwise, why should I?

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Mr. Bieber had been a member of Stamped since its launch last November and only used the app sparingly before he came on as an investor. The company informed us, however, that that account was a fake. Betabeat regrets the error. But can you blame us for wanting to beliebe?

(Source: Warby Parker)

PERFECT TEN. Last Wednesday Time Inc. brought together editors from many of their news properties to bestow upon us the "10 NYC Startups to Watch." Only in the startup picking game since lat year's Internet Week, Time Inc. has already picked winners like GroupMe, which was purchased by Skype for a supposed $85 milion.

The startups that made the cut for 2012 are Adaptly, a social advertising platform; Art.sy, the Pandora of art; Codeacademy, an interactive self-paced tool to learn to code; Enterproid, a mobile platform to segregate work from personal information on a single mobile device; Fab—you already know what Fab does; Fancy Hands, a provider of virtual personal assistants; Loosecubes, a matchmaker for workers and workspaces SideTour; a community marketplace for booking and hosting adventures, Stamped; a five-star-only mobile rating app and Truth Art Beauty; an online platform where users can custom-create skincare blends.

FOUNDER POWER. This Friday Women 2.0 is hosting their New York Founder Friday at 16 East 34th Street. Featured founders Cheryl Yeoh of CityPockets and Eloise Bune of GraciousEloise will begin speaking at 7 p.m. but the event will kick off at 6 p.m. with an introduction by Matt Wolfrom of Makovsky and Company, the event's sponsor. Founder Friday is free, and open to people of all genders, unlike the LOL-inducing "Jews against the Internet" rally, which is $10 and closed to women. Unfortunately, Founder Friday is already at capacity. Add your name to the wait list and cross your fingers.

RALLY IN THE ALLEY. The Association for a Better New York Foundation and Mayor Bloomberg honored the city's technology leaders in Union Square last Thursday including Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley, Greycroft's Alan Patricof, ideeli CEO Paul Hurley and NYTM cofounder Dawn Barber. The Lew Rudin Founder's Award went to New York City deputy mayor for economic development Robert Steel.

MEDIUM MAYHEM. Shelby.tv sat squarely at the intersection of social media and video and last week they began making strides to kick to competition down the block. At The Next Web 2012, cofounder Reece Pacheco unveiled Shelby GT, currently operating in private beta. "Rolls," a tool for organization, curation and the sharing of videos by way of tweets, Facebook posts and other social platforms, make up the centerpiece of this latest social video iteration. Request a private beta invitation to the virtual viewing party here.

DESIGNBOX. Last week LayerVault, an online, unlimited storage space for design files, underwent a redesign adding color extraction and an ability to measure mockups. The "Github for designers" has also introduced "Wormhole," a way to search art files visually by highlighting different design components. That recent shell-out for CS5 might feel a little worse now.

CLOTHES BUY YOU. New York fashion ecommerce company Ruby Ribbon got a $3 million go ahead from Trinity Ventures to launch, sell and market a fashion line "exclusively through social commerce." The company plans to connect to customers on a highly personal level through a national network of stylists who will introduce customers to Ruby Ribbon products at private social functions and in their homes. Ruby Ribbon has been operating stealthily, without so much as a landing page, until today.

PURCHASEST. Ever come across something on Pinterest that you wanted to buy? Well now you can! Sort of. The Fancy wants to treat your eyeballs like a lady while and your wallet like... well pretty much how everyone else treats your wallet. "Everything you see on the site is for sale, or can be for sale, in a function that operates like Groupon in reverse," a press release said. "If someone posts something that develops a huge following -- merchants can come online to sell that item and meet the demand." Fancy just hit half a million users and has big name backers like Square's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Chris Hughes.

WARBY DARKER. Online prescription eyewear retailer Warby Parker just launched a new line of snazzy prescription sunglasses. At $120 they're a little pricier than their non-polarized counterparts.

COMMUTE. Spotify is on the hunt for a senior product manager with at least five years of experience to drive user revenue. App management platform Appboy wants to add a developer to its small team to provide the server backend for mobile client SDKs and the developer dashboard.

via Stamped.com

The iTunes App Store got another offering to the ratings gods today. This one in the form of Stamped, a New York-based startup which boasts two Xooglers as co-founders, Bart Stein and Robby Stein (possible relations? Ed note: We've received word from Stamped's PR team that their last name is merely coincidental), and more Xooglers within its seven-person team.

When TechCrunch first reported on the app back in September, MG Siegler (in his pre-VC days—how quaint!) salivated over Stamped's simplicity, which boils recommendations down to whether or not you'd send something to your friends with a stamp of approval.  At the time, Mr. Siegler compared Stamped to Instagram when "Simplicity and speed won the day."

In a post today, Erick Schonfeld compares it more to Oink, Kevin Rose's app, which also lets you rate things on a granular level (a dinner entree, say, rather than a restaurant), except in a more structured way since Stamped lets your filter your recommendation stream by restaurants, books, movies, and music, rather than Oink's "free form hashtags. "

The value of a stamp is kept intact by starting users off with only 100 stamps. They can earn more by being active users and "like" something if it's not a whole-hearted recommendation. The more you rate things, the better it knows your interests.

The app sounds utilitarian, looks pretty, and seems to address a problem outlined in this recent article about how frictionless sharing drowns out the signal with noise. But our skepticism has to do with some of the issues Stamped brings up in its promotional video, namely that there are already so many apps and sites one needs to find recommendations from friends and strangers. Until we see how many "friends" opt in, it will be hard to tell if Stamped is a signal, or adding to the noise.

Stamped from Stamped on Vimeo.