On Sunday 10/28/07, we released a brand spanking new version of Spleak after a few weeks in beta.  Add spleak@hotmail.com to your MSN Messenger list or "Spleak" to your AIM buddy list and just say hi to play.  Or visit www.spleak.com.

 

The main thing you'll notice from a user standpoint is that Spleak is now all about you.  It is a place where you can find the latest gossip about celebrities and post your own that you find out from your "secret sources".

 

However it is what is underneath that is most interesting and revolutionary.  Over the past four months we've built a platform that I believe will power the next generation of online communities.

 

Currently there are a lot of sites for "personal expression" e.g., MySpace, Facebook.   There are fewer sites dedicated to "community expression".  The best known is probably still Yahoo Groups although there are a few new ones like Ning.

 

In my view, Yahoo Groups, Ning etc are still stuck in the previous century.  In today's world there are a few things that are necessary for useful online communities:

1. An online community should be everywhere I am.  These days people spend more time on IM and mobile phones than they do on the web. 

2. An online community should be accessible everywhere on the web not just on one web site.  People spend their time on existing "destination" websites like MySpace, Facebook, Piczo etc.  Why force users to go to groups.yahoo.com instead of bringing the community to them?

3. Community posts are too long.  I don't want to see a diatribe from one person - i want to see opinions from lots of people.

4. Everything should be ranked.  Do the work for me and tell me what is good.  Be a Google not a Yahoo web directory(remember the pre-Google Yahoo?).

 

Four months ago we set out to solve these so people can have better online communties.

 

Spleak online communities are available through IM and Web today and in the future will be available via SMS on mobile phones. 

Spleak online communities are accessible through "widgets" that any user can put on their social networking page (see my Myspace page: http://myspace.com/imranq2)  You can access these communities right from your MySpace page or your friends MySpace page.

Spleak online communities force users to write short posts - no diatribes.

Spleak online communities automatically rank every post, every poster and every community.  "Good stuff bubbles to the top and bad stuff to the bottom".

 

Celeb Spleak is our first community focused around gossip about celebrities.  This is what is available at spleak@hotmail.com on MSN and Spleak on AIM.  Once  we've iterated on our platform we'll open it up so you'll be able to create your own communities around whatever topics you're interested in.  Your community will be instantly accessible through IM, your MySpace page and mobile.

 

In a future post, I'll talk more about the platform we built and why it was necessary for enabling this next generation of online communities.

 

Feel free to try out CelebSpleak and let me know what you think at imran_atsign_spleak.com.  Replace "_atsign_" with "@".  (i do this to avoid spammers picking up my email address and sending crap).  We will be continuing to add features over the next few months based on what you tell us you want in the next generation onlne communities.