MLKSHK: High Calorie Junk Food Photo Fun You'll Pig On

You know what goes well with I Can Has Cheezburgers? MLKSHKs. In the vein of simple and addictive sites revolving around fun photos, images and community, MLKSHK, the brainchild of Andre Torrez of Simpleform, and formerly of Federated Media, MLKSHK opened its doors tonight (yes, on Friday the 13th) to push you to share your online findings with friends. As I found with late night discussions on Convore prior to that site's unveiling, the combination of creative friends and fun images strewn about the Web can often be side-splittingly funny, and MLKSHK hopes to capture all that in one place - organized by categories, and each share gaining the option to get user interaction in the forms of comments, saves and likes.

MLKSHK (obviously pronounced "Milkshake") separates grouped discussions and shares in what they call "Shakes". You can view shakes from all your friends, find featured shakes chosen by the community, or browse by collections, from animated GIFS, to comics, typography, all manner of TV shows, and of course, off the wall stuff one would expect from a @torrez or @mat project, like "Booze makes it all better" and "Roboshake 2084".

Do I expect to be a lot more productive with my life now that MLKSHK is open to the public after having early access for two months? No. Do I expect to jump in and find yet another site full of silliness and images that everybody wants to see but pretends they don't? Absolutely.

As the service's front page says, "Easily save images from everywhere on the web. The silly ones, the sweet ones, the cool ones, and the gross ones—then share them with your friends and family. Join groups of other people who like the same silly and cool stuff you do and contribute your own."

I've been in tons of silly communities, and most of them end up having a tremendous number of frothy conversations around silly images, be they started on FriendFeed or Facebook, the old Brizzly, Convore and now MLKSHK. Wrinkle your eyebrows at this entry to the world or not, but you know this is the site everybody wanted. Go forth and share.

Foursquare Passes 50 Employees, Adds @Dolapo from AOL

One small and unwritten bit of subtext in July's rumors of a Foursquare and Brizzly engagement was knowledge of Thing Labs' Dolapo Falola moving to New York from the Bay Area. While Thing Labs ended up at AOL later in the year, not part of Foursquare, Dolapo eventually did. The former Googler, Thing Labber and AOLer is now part of the 50-plus strong contingent at Foursquare trying to make the world a geosocial place.

Dolapo (@dolapo) started his software engineering career at IBM before 4 years at Google and moving to Thing Labs in the summer of 2009, where reunited with Google Reader teammates Jason Shellen (@shellen), Chris Wetherell (@cw) and Ben Darnell (@bendarnell), the team created a new Web-based approach to real-time feeds from Twitter and Facebook, spawning the group chat platform, Picnics, now part of AOL's AIM property.

From mid-January, Dolapo Signaled a Change

Today, He Confirms Joining Foursquare

His addition to the Foursquare team pushes employees at the company beyond 50, according to the firm's team Twitter list. (http://twitter.com/#!/foursquare/team/members) The list also includes product manager Noah Weiss (@noah_weiss), another former Googler whose joining was mentioned by Business Insider in mid-January.

Beluga's Pre-SXSW Buzz Builds A Month Into App's Life

With services such as Twitter and Foursquare gaining incredible boosts through high visibility at the yearly South by Southwest event (SXSW), it has become something of a pastime to predict which service will be the breakthrough this year, if any. If early response to Beluga is any indication, the application, in addition to other candidates, such as Yobongo, is in the driver's seat to take that role in 2011. Only a month after the application debuted, the group texting service has gained high-profile mentions in publications as varied as Fortune and TechCrunch, and I can see new contacts joining the service every day - as each new connection from my address book notifies me from within the service.

As debated on Quora, it's widely assumed the best candidates for a boost from SXSW would be those useful at the event itself, be it for discovering top parties, debating keynotes and panels, and enabling people to communicate in the sometimes frenetic venue with spotty wireless support. This leads us to Beluga and Yobongo - the first enabling free texting between friends with intelligent linkage to location data and photos support, and the second offering location-based chat with complete strangers. But Yobongo doesn't have multi-platform support yet (including Android), and Beluga is already seeing good cross-platform engagement from early adopters, former Googlers, and is gaining awareness in the mainstream, especially after having been featured in the Android Market this week by Google - goosing the app's download numbers significantly.


   Updates from Beluga With Photos and GeoLocation

The group chat field is one that is becoming increasingly crowded, with TextPlus, GroupMe and now Beluga being the best-known players. But Beluga, without the 10 million in funding gained by GroupMe, already has an extremely smooth application that integrates well with both mobile and Web-based activity, supports multiple mobile OSes and is very lightweight. As I've seen new "pods" started within my groups of friends, for the casual to the more business-oriented, it's obvious that a simple and fast way to exchange messages in groups, independent of the larger networks, like Twitter and Facebook, is much desired.


   Tony Hung and Siobhan Quinn Rave About Beluga In the App(Note Also the Geographical Reach of this Pod)

Guessing where the application could go in the future would be especially interesting as well. Recall how Brizzly Picnics had both private and public options, letting you publish question and answer chats to the Web for all to see? Today, all Beluga Pods are private to only the participants. There could come a real opportunity to make select Pods public, or even to established tiered roles for such Pods, so you could have read-only participants and moderators for public events, such as SXSW and others.



Foursquare's Dennis Crowley on Beluga's Growth Beyond the Mainstream

If it wasn't enough to just speculate about how the app could perform on the public stage, I was backed by Siobhan Quinn, product manger at Foursquare, who said in one of our Beluga Pods that "Beluga is going to blow up SXSW." Activity in individual pods is jumping, users are joining and feedback so far has been very good. It's been an eventful month for the service already, even over a usually-quiet Holiday break, but the next few months could be very loud indeed.


New Friends Are Joining Beluga All the Time

If you're not already using Beluga, go check it out at http://belugapods.com. Want to add me to a pod? Just use my email address and I'll join.

AOL: You've Got Brizzly! (And They've Got Your AIM)

It's said often that where there is smoke, there is fire. In early July, I tried to read the smoke signals emanating from Brizzly co-founder Chris Wetherell and investor Mike Hirshland on Twitter about a myterious "buyout offer" and "legalese", incorrectly guessing the social media client was going to be joining up with Foursquare. It turns out that my hunch correctly had sniffed out fire, but completely whiffed on the suitor. Instead of a 2010-era nimble startup, Brizzly's acquirer is the 1990s-era AOL, who can now be confirmed is picking up Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly), including the company's well-respected small team, and all company assets, from the Brizzly Web and iPhone client, the Brizzly Guide, the URL shortener, and even its colorful mascot, Phineas T. Brizzly the bear.

The acquisition is said to be at $18 million guaranteed, with potential earnouts to near $30 million. The company's founders, Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell will be running AOL Instant Messenger and the company's lifestream service - giving the pair high profile roles that could impact millions of users immediately.

It was this acquirer that set off the curious tweets in July, putting the team in an odd position of having to deny they were being sold to Foursquare. What was not said, however, was that no sale was taking place, period - because, indeed, those gears had started to turn at an Old Media company speed.

Follow the Bouncing Ball! (Not to Foursquare, but to AOL)

That Thing Labs would be the target of potential M&A activity is no surprise. Shellen and Wetherell are given a good amount of credit for their work at Google on Reader and Blogger, with Shellen's work dating prior to Google's acquisition of the Ev Williams-co-founded Pyra Labs back in 2003. The team is very sharp, and had created not just "yet another" Twitter client, but one that had deep ties into the social graph across multiple networks, and a lightly heralded, but very cool, collaboration system called Picnics.



Mike Tipped Us M&A Was On, But It Took Months to Bake

It's Picnics that has AOL ready to take Brizzly out for more than a mere lunch.

The combination of a top-notch team and intriguing technology saw Thing Labs enter into potential acquisition talks with multiple partners this summer, some who eventually found the product not to be a perfect fit with their portfolio, and still others, who were rejected by the company's team out of fear they would be part of a soulless "talent buy" who would take Brizzly off the map. Meanwhile, as these distractions emerged, the company retained the opportunity to initiate the raise of a Series B round of funding, following their $600k Series A round completed in late 2009. Other potential acquirers included Yahoo! and Google, both of which Thing Labs was said to have turned down.

Yet the somewhat unlikely partner of AOL, a media giant with a damaged brand, especially in the mind of Silicon Valley and startup entrepreneurs more specifically, has emerged as the victorious buyer, following due diligence not just from their team to see if Thing Labs would be a solid complement to their still-popular with millions of people Instant Messenger client, but also from the Thing Labs developers, who wanted to be sure of the quality of AOL's development team, especially as some of them had experienced less than satisfactory relationships with younger gung-ho teams at large Web services previously in their career.

As has been reported by AOL-watchers like Kara Swisher and Mike Arrington over the last couple years, the company is trying to gain a respectable presence in Silicon Valley, under the leadership of former Googler Tim Armstrong. But with company headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, and much of the leadership in New York, AOL is struggling to attract and retain top talent in the Bay Area. The prospect of being acquired by a Web 1.0 property like AOL initially tugged at Thing Labs' leadership, while recognizing the financial benefits for the company's 7 employees, who for the most part, excluding the cofounders, could be seeing a tax bracket upgrade after this transaction settles. While the deal is officially being reported as $18 million, the contract calls for significant earn-out clauses, which could drive the eventual price up to as much as $30 million, serving to provide Golden Handcuffs to the team's talent and locking them up to the company that once flooded the USPS with floppy disks promising free hours each month of dial-up service and a walled garden.

AOL is obviously on an acquisition spree, rivaling only Google in terms of buzz in the last few months. The Thing Labs acquisition follows news today that the company also picked up TechCrunch itself, bringing the tech blog titan into the content-focused Web pioneer. The company also purchased 5 min yesterday.

Interestingly, with the TechCrunch acquisition, AOL has Crunchbase, and with the Thing Labs acquisition, AOL also has the Brizzly Guide - a more real-time directory, edited by users. The two could be complimentary, separate or one could be retired. It's said the Brizzly Guide will be used for real-time home page news curation.

Additionally, the work with Foursquare turned out not to be completely empty after all. While not part of the M&A transaction, Brizzly announced integration with Foursquare overnight, letting you view checkins alongside updates on Twitter and Facebook in the service.

As a sidenote, this continues the unique career path of Thing Labs' Ben Darnell, who in the space of just a little over a year, has worked at Google Reader, then FriendFeed, then Facebook, then Thing Labs and now, AOL. But this time, he probably made a little bit of money. Ben has recently been known for his contributions and leadership to the Tornado Web server project. AOL might be seen as old tech, but it picked up some serious new media leadership here.

Official word of the deal should break soon.

False Positives? I Blame Reverse Scientific Method.

I guess one of the best times to make a public mistake on the blog is at 2 a.m. on a 3-day weekend. Or, in theory, given the absence of hard news, it could instead be one of the worst times, guaranteeing the blunder will fill the vacuum. I got to test the theory this Monday, when I pieced together a number of theoretically unrelated updates and manufactured speculation that two of my favorite and most-watched Web companies, Foursquare and Brizzly, were hooking up.

By morning, both companies denied it outright, but other news outlets wrote it up as a clear miss - which was their right, considering how high profile it could have been if I had been correct.

Fellow blogger Denton Gentry saw my new age sleuthing as registering a false positive, as I made something out of nothing. I've got a history of watching corners of the Web and referral logs for story ideas or new applications, so this route wasn't too much of a change - even if the outcome left much to be desired.

As I see it, the fault for this story had as much to do with reverse scientific method as anything. If you remember scientific method from your grade school science fair projects, the right way to prove a theory is to set up a hypothesis, collect data, analyze it and interpret the results, forming a conclusion. But many a time, once a hypothesis is made, one can see clues everywhere, in fact self-selecting the data. Once I had a buzz in my brain about Brizzly and Foursquare being more than "just friends", I kept digging until I found enough clues to tip it from theoretical to probable.

The combination of @VCMike's update about one startup receiving an offer and that of @cw signing legal papers tipped me over the edge - as at 2 a.m. I was looking for the "one more thing" that could morph a fever dream into a serious scoop. And we still don't know what Mike was referring to - or Chris for that matter, though it could be leftover work from the Plinky sale to Auttomatic.

I tend not to post speculation here. Most of the time, you see my analysis of what I am using and hearing, product news or observations. But to explain the motives behind this, for those who aren't part-time geek tech bloggers, you need only look back at how the news that FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook snuck up on us. I had had my own inklings something major was up when co-founder Paul Buchheit rolled in happy after a late night. Instead of the site's loyalists getting a fair shake at the news, the story debuted on a blog that had been very negative to the site in the past. Similarly, news of Brizzly's own Picnics feature (which I like a lot) had muted response, thanks to what I saw as a half-hearted outreach plan.

Those two contributing pieces, in addition to my unanswered hypotheses (at the time) thrown to @shellen and @cw, made me feel I could take the risk of getting ahead of a story even if I didn't have all the data signed and sealed. I've seen worse conjecture with fewer clues on other sites before, and had anecdotal data from third parties that helped me feel I had the story right - late at night when most people were turning in after an evening of fireworks.

So, yes, I got the story wrong - and many people couldn't see how I thought the two teams might leverage one another. I could see it ... with a new Web and iPhone client dedicated to Foursquare... a tie-in of Foursquare tips to the Brizzly guide, and somehow... Picnics to talk about venues. It could happen. I've seen worse fits. So for this round, I was wrong, but I'm not totally repentant. I don't mind being wrong every once in a while, having tried and missed, than having not tried at all.

See some of the ensuing fallout:
The Next Web: Could Foursquare be looking to acquire Brizzly? [Updated: No]
VentureBeat:  Thing Labs CEO: No Brizzly buy for Foursquare
Business Insider: Brizzly CEO Shoots Down Foursquare Acq-Hire Speculation
GigaOM: No! Foursquare Isn’t Buying Brizzly

Updated: Foursquare and Brizzly "Just Friends" For Now

Update: Following last night's post, Jason Shellen of Thing Labs, as well as Alex Rainert of Foursquare both said there was more smoke than fire to this and that the two companies are merely friends. I still think it'd be great if they tied the knot, so consider this a trial run.



Around noon on Sunday, Mike Hirshland of Polaris Venture Partners tweeted that it was "truly ironic" a startup would receive a buyout offer on "Independence Day". But what startup, what offer, and from where? Reading the tea leaves and looking at various updates, I am cautiously speculating there could be a bid for Thing Labs, the makers of Brizzly, from the red-hot geolocation startup, Foursquare.

Which Company Saw Fireworks This July 4?

Hirshland is a backer of Thing Labs, as is SoftTech VC's Jeff Clavier and Michael Jones, an angel investor. Polaris is also invested in a number of other tech firms, including Formspring, but a recent trip to Manhattan to Foursquare HQ by Thing Labs' founders Chris Wetherell (@CW) and Jason Shellen (@Shellen) suggests where there is smoke there is fire.

Signing Papers. For What?

This trip, which could have been as little as a social visit or a deeper partnership to integrate Foursquare data into Brizzly's client, was followed up by a tweet from Chris on the 4th, who said his Independence day was "filled with legalese and lawyers." While yes, this could be for anything, business or personal, one can connect the rumor dots and reach a tentative conclusion that something is afoot at Thing Labs, who recently launched Picnics, and has looked to differentiate itself from other Twitter clients, especially following Twitter's acquisition of Tweetie and parallel launch of a dedicated Android client, which sent aftershocks into the developer community.

Jason and Chris flew to New York on June 28th to meet with Foursquare on the 29th, and returned on the 30th, if their updates on Twitter are any indication. The visit on the 29th just so happened to coincide with the day Foursquare announced their raise of $20 million in a series B investment, giving them plenty of cash (or stock equivalent at a new valuation) to pick up Thing Labs. The company most recently picked up $600k in funding in November of 2009 bringing total funding to just over $2 million.

Jason and Chris Set off to NYC to See Foursquare

Chris Reports It's A Nice Place!

The talent behind Brizzly, without question, is world class. Jason and Chris specifically have years of experience ranging from Blogger to Google Reader, and they sport a supporting staff with a pedigree including more ex-Googlers, including Ben Darnell, who briefly spent time at FriendFeed and later, Facebook. The idea of pointing that talent at Foursquare and its mountain of check-in data, assuming my speculation has any merit, is intriguing, and could lead to new clients and new ways to rank the world of real-time geo-location.

Looks Like the Trip to Manhattan Was Fruitful?

Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, in explaining their investment in Foursquare, cited a leading CEO with Dennis Crowley (@dens), a killer product, and a gigantic market. They didn't say anything about the potential to use the money toward acquisitions, and Dennis has been spending time at the World Cup in South Africa this week, while Jason has taken a few days off on vacation himself, if photos from the lake with his sons are any indication. So it could be this speculation is dead on arrival. But it is clear the Foursquare team and Brizzly are close, and Mike's got an acquisition potentially on his hands somewhere.

Why not let it be two amazing companies combining to crown the winner in geolocation? Of note, I did e-mail Chris on the subject earlier Sunday and did not receive a response. A direct message to Jason about the possibility of the two companies joining forces sent earlier in the week went unanswered. I have not yet reached out to Foursquare or the VCs behind the company.

Brizzly Rolls Out Picnics for Private Real-Time Group Chats

After nearly a month's worth of public trials, on Tuesday, Brizzly finally announced the launch of Picnics - the newest approach to private group chat on the Web, leveraging the company's rich media roots and intelligent conversational UI found in their popular social networking client to give less public conversations a new home - even as other sites are continuing to peel back the layers of what is public and what is not. The result, a fun free-flowing environment to chat with friends, family and colleagues without fear of the content going public, and without the headaches associated with more feature-laden tools, like the much discussed Google Wave.

While Brizzly is well known for their Twitter and Facebook client for the Web and iPhone, the company is branching out from being solely beholden to those two sites. Their Brizzly Guide explains the day's hot topics, and Picnics, which require a dedicated Brizzly account, take place outside of both networks.

The concept of a Picnic is a private (or public, if you choose) chat with any number of people you invite. Updates are posted chronologically, with the oldest at the top, and you can add photos in line. Quoted tweets are displayed with a unique design, and hours can be wasted playing with the customizable Webcam feature, and its related effects.

A Chat From Earlier This Month With My Dad

A Sidebar (Like a DM) With Foursquare's @dens on the Hire of @siobhanquinn.

Before you say "Hey! Web chat is nothing new!"... yes, that's somewhat right, but Picnics are surprisingly useful. You can customize the people invited to participate, you can get e-mail notifications upon new entries, and can even start 1-1 sidebars with people involved in each Picnic, much like direct messages without the overhead. Brizzly's leading Web app capability to display photos in line is also a fun addition that brings us ages beyond the world of shared text windows.

Brizzly's introduction comes at a time when Facebook and Google and others have been called on the carpet for violating privacy. They know this and said that the launch of Picnics puts "you in control of who sees what you say and where," adding "Have a picnic with your friends to post the funny YouTube videos you used to put on your wall." Meanwhile, Twitter, while it has improved, continues to strain under the pressure of one to many conversations, and lacks the potential for rich discussion in an intimate way that Picnics bring. So Picnics gets privacy right and it gets conversations right in a fun way.

I've been using Picnics to talk with friends and family for weeks, and the debut is welcome. Check them out at http://www.brizzly.com.

You Asked Twitter to Grow Up. They Have. And You're Mad?

The Friday night surprise of Twitter having acquired Tweetie from Atebits, and adding its creator, Loren Brichter, to the company's swelling mobile team, on the back of Twitter's also announcing their first mobile client for BlackBerry, not only was big news on its own, but it has set off waves in the world of Twitter application developers and users, some of whom are seeing the move as something akin to a betrayal or an anti-competitive move, which puts the owners of the platform in conflict with those expanding it. While I am sympathetic to some of their positions, having seen competitive clients find the world in which they live a lot more difficult, the step is a brilliant one, which is an important stepping stone in terms of moving Twitter forward as a business. For years, as users and coders, we begged for Twitter to graduate from the lean startup mode, with questionable quality and uptime, to one focused on delivering an exceptional product. Now, they are executing, and the next 12 months will undoubtedly be defining in terms of how the company potentially transitions from an cash-burning endeavor to a revenue-generating technology giant.

First and foremost, the most telling bit from Twitter's post on the acquisition of Tweetie came in the first paragraph, when the company explained that people searching Apple's iTunes App store for a Twitter client would not find an official application, but instead a host of them, which was confusing and offputting. While we early adopters have enjoyed the array of Twitter clients, from TweetDeck and Seesmic to Tweetie, Brizzly and many others, it is easy to see how the mainstream audience could be lost before even starting. After all, Facebook and LinkedIn have official applications for the iPhone, from the company themselves, and Twitter didn't - a major hole in their offering. This admission by Twitter to said hole, and solving it on two platforms in one day, is a big move, and one that further cements their brand leadership, instead of sharing that brand with another client or another service.

The acquisition of Tweetie instead of other applications is sharp for more reasons than one. Note that TweetDeck and Seesmic and Brizzly, as well as many other applications serving Twitter, have been drawn to support multiple services in addition to Twitter, most often Facebook. Twitter buying Tweetie, which had remained Twitter-centric, avoids the headaches of peeling away Facebook or Identica or other services' updates, and keeping the application dedicated. Also, despite my personal relationships with many different Twitter client developers, I have always found myself coming back to Tweetie, both on the iPhone and on the Mac. In October, after thinking aloud about Twitter (Web), Tweetie, TweetDeck, Seesmic and Brizzly, I came to the conclusion that Tweetie was closest to the ever-elusive perfect Twitter client. Not only did it offer a top-quality feature set, but it did so with an unmatched interface and innovative integration with practically all leading-edge options, like location, photo integration and lists. So Twitter is not just buying a solution, but they are buying the best one. That Atebits was practically a sole proprietorship, not burdened with millions of dollars of VC funding, as Seesmic and TweetDeck are, made the purchase an even easier move.

If you wrap all that into one statement, Twitter arguably purchased the best client for the best price with the best dedicated feature set, keeping their service at the center of the universe, not competing for attention from other social streams. In one fell swoop, Twitter went from being a zero on the iPhone and Mac client space to the leader, and we can expect iPad comes soon.

But enough about that. People are still throwing up their hands about Twitter's move, saying it makes developers less likely to work on their platform. That platform owners sometimes innovate in ways that go head to head with their own ecosystem is not new. (See: Charles Hudson: Three Reminders About Platform Businesses) Microsoft has made a living from it. Apple does it all the time. And now Twitter is maturing and doing the same. This isn't because they are evil, or hate developers at all. What they need to do is extend their product and extend their brand and start to do a better job of owning the user experience. To date, the Web site has not seen as much growth as the client ecosystem, meaning much of Twitter's onboarding and initial user experience has been owned by third party apps who are not as loyal to the platform, all too happy to offer options to gain data from Facebook and Linkedin, for example.

Much of the discussion in the last week has centered around Twitter developers plugging holes in the company's product. No doubt for the most part that has been true. For example, SocialToo, Jesse Stay's company, where I am an advisor, in early March, enabled phishing protection in all direct messages for all users. (I wrote about it) That was announced on Monday, March 8th, after significant development. But the very next day, on Tuesday, March 9th, Twitter announced that they too were stepping up their anti-phishing attacks in direct messages. The assumption could be that Twitter was cutting Jesse off at the knees, but in reality, they were working to protect their own customers and doing the right thing. Jesse wrote a little about that tonight in a post titled "Twitter, Two Years Later and Nothing Has Changed", and he knows, as I do, that it will take more than plugging holes in Twitter's product to develop a successful business.

While Twitter's move removed a competitive lead from SocialToo in this specific case, it was no cause for alarm or fury, any more than it should be for dedicated Twitter clients who will be building alternatives to Twitter's own products now. If they are looking to attract users, they will need to continue finding ways to offer differentiated user experiences, and innovating where Twitter may be behind. Keep in mind that it was Twitter's users who came up with hashtags, replies and retweets, and clients like TweetDeck who debuted columns and multi-account support. Buying Tweetie doesn't mean that Twitter overnight is going to be innovating at that level.

In December, following a presentation by Ryan Sarver, Twitter's director of platform, at LeWeb, I said that "Twitter's Maturation Continues As They Embrace Developers". While this week's news may not feel like an embrace, it is absolutely sign of maturation. The company is now stopping those holes, and securing the infrastructure. We also have already seen hints of a new revamped Web interface that should take the user experience up another level again. The company continues to hire new people practically every week, almost all of them notable - and bringing with them solid resumes from Valley giants.

This rich pedigree of people and a growing user base that is showing record site activity every month, along with the company's planned @Anywhere platform, pending advertising model, and expansion through business development and word of mouth around the world is setting Twitter up for market leadership approachable by only a small handful of Silicon Valley titans. It's what we all have been asking for them to do as we begged for site stability, greater user discovery, improved tools and reduced latency. There will be some bumps along the way, as the developer community sees churn, and some products eventually are made obsolete. But Twitter can't reduce its own potential in the name of being the friendly nice guy. They need to think about their own business and driving the greatest possible experience for the greatest number of people, in a profitable way. This weekend's moves, and updates we can expect from Chirp this week will push them further along the path.

DISCLOSURE: I am an unpaid advisor to SocialToo. I hold a small equity stake in the company.

Plinky's ~30,000 Users Left to Talk Amongst Themselves

With the Thing Labs team focused almost completely on Brizzly for the last several months, the company's ability to give attention to both their intriguing social media client and the product that preceded it, Plinky, the pushy prompt site, looks to have run out. In an e-mail to all registered users, the team said this week's prompt, one of more than 400 published to date, would be the last. While the site will remain active for the near term, it won't be seeing much attention going forward.

When Plinky launched back in January of 2009, the concept was to inspire average social media users and bloggers to create new content "and look good doing it", as CEO Jason Shellen said. But the site didn't gain significant traction. Despite enticing a robust 28,712 registrations (as of 1 a.m. on April 7th), Plinky could not sustain traffic from their launch, fading to less than 10,000 visitors a month in the US, according to Compete.com.

Luckily for Thing Labs, Brizzly is a much different story, having sustained 100,000+ visitors each month for the last half-year, and recently adding a new iPhone application, at the beginning of March.

Plinky will be left open, for now, and the Thing Labs team didn't sound like they were trying to sweep the site under the rug with their note to users today, saying:

"We put a lot of work into it, and we think it's a great site. At the same time, we feel we have much more to offer with Brizzly than we ever could have with Plinky."

You can see the company's official announcement on their blog, titled "An important announcement".

On Monday, the Users Will Strike Back Against Products

Although I covered a pair of panels from the South by Southwest conference in Austin yesterday, I didn't go deep and explain why I chose to return to the event, which I first participated in and attended last year. Thanks to work at home and with Paladin, I almost opted out of SXSW in 2010, but after being offered the opportunity to speak on behalf of users everywhere and talk about how we may be losing the battle against products that are poorly designed or don't have our input, I had to accept - and therefore, I am spending the weekend in Austin. Tomorrow, in a core conversation, where I will participate in tandem with Chris Wetherell of Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly), and formerly of Google Reader we will sound the alarm for users to once again get the upper hand.

As users, we for too long have not had much of a voice in the products we are expected to use. We have been dragged through iteration after iteration of beta software, expected to accept poor user interfaces, lost data, incompatibilities and decisions that have been made that benefit the company rather than ourselves. We have seen violations of privacy, we have seen sites that we like abandoned when founders get bored, or when the acquiring company has no interest in supporting the existing community.

In an allegedly social world, we have seen companies think all they have to do is start a Twitter account or beg you to join their Facebook pages, but instead of having real connections, the are sending out their interns to spout coupon codes and collect follower counts. We have seen discussion boards and feedback forums created, and then ignored.

Users are not to be feared. Users are to be embraced - and very often, we may have some fantastic ideas in terms of how to drive your product strategy that will help your company gain in differentiation, gain market share, and outperform the competition.

This is not a game of power users demanding power and access. This is a cry for help, to give us the option to trust you again. Just like every airline reminds us at the end of every flight, yes we have choices, and we are looking for solutions that give us real value. We want to help you.

If you are at SXSW in Austin tomorrow, please take up a torch on behalf of users everywhere, and join us at 11 o'clock to talk about how we can prevent products we like from becoming products we hate - and ask developers to take us seriously. We are in Hilton J, and the session is titled: "Products vs. Users: Who's Winning?"

Join us: http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/770

Brizzly Acquires Birdfeed, WikiRank, Adds iPhone App

Thing Labs, the parent company of Brizzly, one of the more innovative Twitter Web clients out there, unveiled a slew of announcements this morning, with the acquisition of popular iPhone application Birdfeed and WikiRank, a visualization Web app based on Wikipedia data. The acquisitions will help fuel the launch of Brizzly's first branded iPhone application, and a new Brizzly Guide, which extends the trend explanations core to Brizzly since the product debuted with permanent definitions, accessible even after a topic stops trending.

The Brizzly Guide, as you can assume, looks much like Wikipedia, integrating a trending topics definition with related links, and a Twitter search. For example, Chuck Norris is trending because he turns 70 years old today, and SXSW is trending because of its debut on March 12th. This furthers the company's focus on the Let's Be Trends API launched last fall.

Why Is Chuck Norris Trending? Because Chuck Norris Trends When He Wants.

"I would love to see the Guide fill the gap in 'why are people talking about this' and 'what is it' that I don't see on Wikipedia or other search/news sources. Wikipedia is definitely of great value and we use it for context on some Guide pages," said Thing Labs CEO Jason Shellen. "We are turning on new ways to contribute and can't wait to see how our users continue to help explain the world around them."

Brizzly's new iPhone application, released today, has been much awaited, and a clear hole in their lineup. But the company took a different approach. Rather than building their own app from scratch, they acquired Birdfeed, and worked with the developer, Buzz Andersen (@buzz), who recently joined Jack Dorsey's Square, to add new features and release it as a branded app.


Brizzly's New iPhone App With Custom Tabs and Photos
The new iPhone app features many Brizzly-only features, including Brizzly Guide support, uploading of photos to Brizzly Pics, and muting from Brizzly.com. It also features multiple account support, lists, saved searches, classic retweets, custom tabs and infinite scrolling, according to a microsite on the new product, found at http://brizzly.com/iphone/.

Beyond Search: Twazzup Prepares New Twitter Web Client

Last April, Twazzup looked to make searching Twitter a more rich experience, one-upping the vanilla Twitter search interface by adding graphics, real-time updates, and influencers of individual accounts, to name a few most obvious improvements. Now, the company looks to be on the verge of shifting gears in an aggressive way, developing not yet another search engine, but instead, a feature-rich Web client for Twitter that looks within the real-time content stream to find different types of updates, and even goes so far as to expand links shared on Twitter, providing followers with a preview of that which you have shared. The result is easily the most compelling Twitter Web experience I have seen since Brizzly, even if it is not yet known when the service will open up to all, or what it means for the company's current search offering.


Twazzup Breaks Out Content by Type, Displays Rich Media, Integrates Search
With Twitter's maturation, the service has recently adopted a number of new features, including the much-discussed Lists, addition of geolocation, and integrated retweeting. These additions have led to greater functionality by practically all clients, but few have looked to take the next step, not only integrating the new options, but presenting a new approach to the real-time streams. Brizzly was among the first to debut in-line display of video and images. Twazzup does this also, but in addition, expands links to provide previews of content, like you see on Facebook, and the automated categorization of content by its type, a sentiment analysis of updates, and an associated tag cloud, velocity of updates, and the ability to take action on updates, such as favorites, retweets, or replies in a single click.


Viewing a list shows sentiment analysis and a content cloud
To be honest, the more I played with the beta functionality of the new Twazzup, the more features I uncovered. While not completely baked, it is easily the most feature-rich Web client out there, and when it does debut, it should see people kicking the tires in a big way.

Today, Twitter's standard Web client is functional, if not exciting. You have the familiar "What's happening?" box and a series of updates from those you follow, as well as your own personal statistics on the right. Twazzup focuses less on your own numbers, but those from your stream.


Note the velocity in the top right and new updates on Twazzup


Mentions on Twazzup also show tags, sentiment, who shared the content.
In addition to a simple "Post Update" button, Twazzup's client shows the total number of recent updates from those in my stream in the last hour, selects "Highlights", which includes those I talk to most often, influencers and popular shared links, "Photos and Video" for shares that display rich media, "Questions" for those updates that have questions, and "Map", which highlights updates that feature geolocation, complete with avatars from those Tweeters.


Check Out Twazzup's Map for Where Tweets Originate


Retweets, replies and favorites in line on Twazzup.
The velocity of the tweets can vary from time of day, of course. In my testing, it looked like the nearly 10,000 people I follow were tweeting at a velocity between 6,000 and 15,000 updates a day, on a quiet Sunday. No doubt a weekday, or a big news day, would see higher numbers. Given the high numbers, it can sometimes be hard to find the most relevant data. Twazzup dices these updates with its powerful search roots. A "Refine" search box on the right shows only those tweets in my stream that match keywords, and the search term is highlighted in results.


Searching for a frequent term in the stream on Twazzup
One of Twazzup's big features is a minimalist navigation bar atop the screen, which shows lists you follow, mentions, and an Inbox (where direct messages come and go). On the right side, you also have a "Settings" box which lets you choose what contributes to your "Highlights" on the page. It's much like the right navigation bar on the Twitter page, but the only numbers that populate it are those of how many mentions you have seen, how many new messages are in your in box, or how many new items are on your home stream.


I can choose my Highlights from Twazzup.
In place of the right side navigation, you get details on your stream, from a tag cloud based on included keywords, with larger words being used most frequently, and a smiley face to indicate positive feedback, or frown to indicate negative mood.

Twazzup's new Twitter client shows significant potential, especially when compared to Twitter.com and Brizzly, but it doesn't yet offer some of the more advanced features some clients offer, from what I could tell, including support for Facebook, multiple user support or columns, like Seesmic Web. But it does hint at API integrations, including a connection to LinkedIn, so I will be very interested in seeing what is in store for the very newest of Twitter Web clients. I don't yet have information on when the service will open up, or what this means for Twazzup's current search offering, but there will soon be a new name in town when it comes to Web interfaces for Twitter, and that name is Twazzup.

Thing Labs Reports Brizzly's Growth Exceeded Targets

With such a wide number of Twitter clients out there, from dedicated Web clients to iPhone or Android applications or still others for desktop operating systems, each that has gained traction has done so thanks to its unique features and innovation, which attract loyal users. Brizzly, a popular Web client which supports multiple accounts for both Facebook and Twitter, has gained traction thanks to inline display of videos and images, a new approach to direct messages, and integrated definitions for trending topics.

As interesting to me as the product itself, among my favorite Twitter apps, is Thing Labs, the team behind Brizzly. The majority of those on the company's small engineering team hail from Google, most visibly headed by CEO Jason Shellen and co-founder Chris Wetherell, who were among the creators and champions for Google Reader, the RSS reader where I spend much of my time online taking on the data firehose. With Jason and Chris turning their attention toward social services, the company has been pleasantly surprised by gaining more users than originally anticipated, and is now working to scale the service without the benefits of a massive organization like the one they enjoyed at Google.

In a candid, yet casual, interview I held with Jason and Chris on Monday at their San Francisco headquarters, the pair walk us through Brizzly and its place within Thing Labs, how they view their product, and how their experience growing Google Reader, and in Jason's case, Blogger, prior to its acquisition by Google, have help set the stage for their new startup's growth. After a series of incremental changes in the last few months, it sounds like Brizzly is heading for some large introductions in the next quarter, probably before the SXSW conference, which will have everyone who has ever looked at the product to revisit it and see what's new. The full interview, about 10 minutes in length, is embedded below:

10 Top New Web Services of 2009 (From My Perspective)

Last year, I highlighted ten top Web services that debuted in the year, from Socialmedian to BackType and Feedly. Not an all-encompassing list, blogging colleague Robert Scoble asked if "I was right", adding on a few of his own.

With 2009 coming to a close, I thought it made sense to highlight some of my own personal favorites which are gaining traction. Keep in mind that I am not ranking these services necessarily in a most important to least important order, and I am ignoring some other top services (for example, Foursquare, which launched in March, or some Zynga properties), due to my own non-use.

As with 2008, many services debuted in 2009 that were not stand-alone services, but instead, hooked into existing environments, like Twitter and Facebook, or the iPhone.

1) Pubsubhubbub

2009 was all about real-time and moving data more quickly from place to place. No technology or service better epitomized that than Pubsubhubbub, an open protocol engineered from a team of Googlers who were looking to accelerate the delivery of updates between services with near-zero latency. Pubsubhubbub's simplicity and clear benefits resulted in many major services adopting it and virtually eliminating the expected wait times for aggregators and readers to get updates, while also reducing the need for said aggregators to repeatedly poll content sources.

Pubsubhubbub, adopted by Blogger, FeedBurner, Cliqset, FriendFeed and many others, also spurred into action the launch of Dave Winer's RSSCloud, adopted by Wordpress for similar purposes. The launch of Pubsubhubbub also fed the growth of Superfeedr, an increasingly popular utility that aims to deliver real-time notifications via the cloud.

2) Google Wave

Google Wave made a huge splash in 2009. (Review) If you weren't trying it out and aiming to find out what value it actually brought, it was probably because you were begging for an invite and hadn't found one yet. The real-time collaboration tool was mischaracterized by many who thought it could replace e-mail, or different social networks' activity, and it hasn't found too many people relying on it as a core service yet, but its innovation has many looking to see what the end game looks like.

3) Square

Although extremely new, Jack Dorsey's follow-up to Twitter, Square, is very alluring. A simple hardware add-on to the iPhone (and in the future, other mobile devices), Square lets any individual accept credit card transactions, verifies the purchaser, and provides the purchaser with an electronic record of the activity via their Web site.

Dorsey and team skillfully looked at a daunting world of differing devices and managed to find the commonalities between them (an audio port to be specific) and delivered something that could potentially change the game for small merchants and individuals, providing true mobile commerce that doesn't require cash.

4) Echo

The launch of JS-Kit's Echo product was such a big move for the company that they changed their name to reflect it. Echo, recognizing the sea change evident in social media that has moved much of the discussion of content away from core blogs, aggregated downstream activity at the host blog, including retweets and other social network reactions.

In addition, Echo brought real-time to everyone's comment stream, turning a once static entity into a live chat room. You can see Echo in action on popular sites including those from Brian Solis and 1938media.

5) my6sense

With more data coming in from more sources than ever, it is unlikely that most people are following fewer people or feeds at the end of 2009 than they were at the beginning of the year. Combined with a rise in mobile Web access, and you can see how my6sense's digital intuition for RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook makes sense, surfacing relevant data that is customized just for you.

The company has an iPhone app available, free, now, and has publicly promised that Android development is planned in the short term. Keep in mind that I am helping to advise the service, but I have been impressed with their offering, and see the issue of curation as one that many services will tackle in 2010.

6) Brizzly

Brizzly, a product from Thing Labs, is one of the more novel approaches to consuming one's Twitter and Facebook streams. The first to enable in-line viewing of images and video, the addition of customized trend definitions and novel approaches to direct messages and multiple account support, Brizzly is a compelling Web-based alternative to the standard interface from Twitter and competing clients, such as Seesmic.

Earlier in the year, Thing Labs also introduced Plinky, which while cute, doesn't look to be setting the world on fire.

7) Lazyfeed

For a technology supposedly on its last legs, RSS sure had a lot of very interesting innovation in 2009 (See also: Pubsubhubbub and my6sense). Lazyfeed came on the scene this summer with a real-time approach to feed discovery and the ability to follow several topics at once. A live interface and rapidly displayed content has made the product easily among the most fun ways to take in a lot of information, while keeping things "lazy".

With the slowing of central directories like Technorati, Lazyfeed became one of the best sites for me to use to find new sources who were discussing topics I was interested in, letting me add them to my reading list.

8) Flickchart

In May, Flickchart introduced a site for comparing your favorite movies, across time, genres, or even against your previous picks. Although simple, the "pick your favorite" approach became very addicting, and the site now sports more than 40,000 registered users, who have contributed more than 60 million rankings. (See blog post)

One of the unexpected side benefits of Flickchart for me was finding top movies rated by friends which I had never seen, which spurred me to finally add them to my iTunes or NetFlix.

9) Lunch.com and Simler

I am combining both Lunch.com and Simler, as both sites seem to be in their growth stages, and have similar goals - helping you to find interesting people who share the same interests. Lunch.com asks you for your spheres of interests, and to rank specific items on a -5 to +5 scale. In contrast, Simler asks you to add tags that describe your interests, and links you with those others who have also added the same tags.

Both Lunch.com and Simler suggest that you post new items to topic-oriented pages, and engage in discussion with others in your network. Lunch.com seems to be more product-oriented, while Simler is more focused on more abstract things, such as television, music and technology. Simler, like my6sense, is a client of Paladin.

10) Tweetie

If Brizzly was included, it also makes sense that Tweetie makes the list, even if it has no specific Web-only interface. Tweetie has become the gold standard for Twitter clients on the iPhone, and was among the first to incorporate many of the advanced capabilities introduced by Twitter, including Lists, geolocation, and retweets. Tweetie also has a solid Macintosh version, which I use often.

Also on this year's list but outside of the top 10:
Blippy, Cadmus, Cliqset, Gowalla, Salmon, Twazzup

What did I miss, overlook or understimate in 2009? Let me know. I am sure you have some better ideas.