The recently launched Squirl allows collectors to become online curators. The company is betting on the fact that hardcore collectors will benefit from sharing their object obsession online and interacting with like-minded people.

Squirl was founded by two friends who saw a need for an online service that would let anyone keep a digital copy of their collections, whether it be 3000 45rpm records or Pez dispensers. Unlike Wishlistr and Your-Wishlist, Squirl is about showing off the unique items that you already own. And, unlike listal, Squirl doesn’t limit its users to movies, books, music, and games. They’re really trying to build niche communities around any type of object in general, which is a similar to what Fanpop is doing for interests.

Of course, the most important part of a collections site is the uploading. It’s really the tedious act of digitizing your collection that can be the real turn-off in using a service like Squirl. They allow you enter each item manually, batch upload 5 items at a time, or import data from Amazon (when available). Each item can have an associated name, picture, description, tags, condition, dimensions, and various other metrics.

Uploading is fairly easy to do, but I think they should consider more third party support. Amazon and listible already lets you create lists, and many people are passionate about them. Squirl would be wise to let these users automatically import lists from similar services. Also, for hardcore collectors with tons of items, an Excel or plaintext formatted file importer would be useful.

Squirl currently offers two plans: free and plus. The free plan lets users have a maximum of 3 collections and maximum of 200 items. The plus plan, which costs $25.95 a year, gives 5000 max items and unlimited collections. Personally, I don’t have enough collections to justify the plus plan. Is there anyone who would consider using the plus service?

Currently, there aren’t too many collections on Squirl. For collection browsers like me, the real power of Squirl will come when thousands of niche collections are created.

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