I’m sort of interested in social software and I’ve signed up for every networking site since MIT’s Firefly and Sixdegrees but I’ve always thought that it’s all a bit academic until we start to see some second-order networking applications – sites whose primary function isn’t just… well… networking… but something else, something more specific – like losing weight, for instance, or unloading the contents of your attic on eBay.
David Galbraith alerts me to a really quite nifty new chat application that he’s been helping out with called Chatango and David MaCaney, CEO of Dublin-based Cafeslim, is connecting his customers – the slimmers – to help them get more from his weight loss programme. Chatango does IM-style presence detection without a download and that means your chat identity can be an ordinary http URL which – this is the neat bit – means you can paste it into your eBay or Craigslist listings and invite people to ‘click to chat’. I’ve signed up for Chatango (but not for Cafeslim – which is probably the wrong way round) so you can now chat with me (provided I’m online) by clicking here: http://bowbrick.chatango.com.