What is CommYou?

It's a bit like a blog, somewhat more like a forum, but with bits of a chat room added in.

It's a recognition that your discussions are currently scattered to the winds of the Net, in a hundred little tiny isolated systems, none of which are really about conversation -- and so all of them are kind of annoying, and hard to keep track of.

It's a blurring of the lines between realtime "up-tempo" conversations like IM and chat, and slower "down-tempo" forum discussions, because there is no good reason for there to be such hard walls between these. Sometimes a conversation is going faster, sometimes slower; you shouldn't have to switch tools for that.

It's a statement that the world doesn't need yet more social networks -- you already have plenty of those. What it does need is better ways to talk with the people in your networks. Your networks define a host of communities: your friends, your groups, your events. You should be able to talk with all of those through a single, easy-to-use mechanism.

It's all about the conversations, and doing conversation well.

So where is it?

CommYou isn't going to play the stealth game: we want folks involved from the very beginning. So the first alpha release will be going online, in Facebook, in late April 2008. That'll be very simplistic, with only the first 20% of the features in place -- really still just a toy, albeit already with a few new ideas. But over the coming months, you'll be able to watch as it gradually turns into the best place to talk with your communities.

Our community of early adopters will be influential in helping us decide which features go in soon, and which ones wait for later. They'll help us refine the user interface, as we puzzle out how to build something really powerful without being confusing. They'll help us figure out when the system crosses the line from experiment to useful and usable.

So if you want to be involved from the beginning, and help shape a new world of conversation, check back here in a few weeks for more information about how to sign up. We hope you'll join in -- it should be a fun ride!