FIXZR

Weblins offers an innovative product that lets people socialise around existing cyber-destintations. You can hang-out (like disaffected teenagers) around any webpage (the webpage doesn’t have to cooperate). You can approach others lurking on the same page, and chat/flirt/argue just like you might in a pub or newsgroup. Interactions happen in real time, and have the casual nature of bumping into someone.

Now I started using the product and (despite some infuriating annoyances when I couldn’t witch it off) was impressed by some of the use cases it could enable. For example, I ‘bumped into’ people reading web-pages about IE6 browser testing - how else would I find such people, and find them at a time when they’re ready to chat about such things (the temporal nature of he interactions is actually very useful).

Weblins however suffers from some limitations, not least that it is new and prone to the negative side of the network effect. I’d like to see a similar service based on Twitter and Skype. Perhaps a Firefox plugin that showed all Twitter comments relating to a web-page, and (through email look-up) the Skype IDs of anyone who Tweeted in the last few minutes about the page. If you build it, I will come (if you find an effective marketing channel that can reach met that is).