Not being a fan of memory-hogging desktop clients, I prefer to use Web apps in my browser of choice (Google Chrome) for most everything. For Twitter, I tend to use Brizzly, a product of San Francisco-based Thing Labs, which was founded by former Googlers.
It’s a nice Web app, apart from its annoying general sluggishness, and new features get added consistently so it has me sticking around for now.
This morning when logging in, I was greeted with a message saying that ‘Brizzly Picnics are coming soon’. Clicking through for more information, I found myself on this page, which talks a bit about what the new feature is or will be.
It’s all a bit cryptic, but here’s the whole message they’re trying to convey:
Friend is not a verb. Your real friends are already your friends. In Brizzly Picnics you can make sure they stay that way. Invite only the people you want to join you in a conversation. Much like you might do in real life. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Spam? What spam? When you’re in control of who you talk to, you won’t see unwanted messages. Brizzly Picnics put you in control of the guest list (just like a real picnic, or party, or conversation.)
The guy who bought your couch is not your buddy. I mean, he seemed nice and all when he answered your classified ad, but he’s basically a stranger. So why would he be in a list of people with whom you might share information with? We don’t think he should be. He won’t be, in Brizzly Picnics.
There’s a time and a place for Bieber. …and it’s probably not while you’re talking to your dad. If you care about celebrity news, there’s probably a good way for you to find out about it. It shouldn’t rudely interrupt conversations with your friends. Brizzly Picnics will keep news about teenage Canadian pop stars polite.
Your family doesn’t need a subject line. You’ve got a funny video, or an interesting news story, or a new website to share. Do you really need to open up a new email thread? Not if you’re using Brizzly Picnics. Just have a conversation.
You don’t want to hear about a pretend farm. You’re probably really happy your friend’s digital farm is going well and everything, but don’t want to hear about it every day. That’s why you should just invite them to talk. In a Brizzly Picnic. Coming soon.
You can cut the clutter from your conversations. Not everything you say needs to be broadcast. You might have different things to say to different groups of people. Brizzly Picnics will let you do this. Pretty easily, in fact.
Looking at past coverage, I noticed the startup talked about Picnics before, and even has a live example right here (a dead link to another one turns up in search results, too).
Sounds to me like a Twitter or Google Buzz type service but inherently private, for communication in small groups that doesn’t belong out in the open. Kinda like opening up a private chatroom or IM session – or is there more to it?
I guess we’ll find out more ‘soon’.
Though I’m hoping they’ll sort out the loading speed issues first …
