DIGITAL MEDIA

Jodee Rich

The prolonged reversal of fortune endured by One.Tel founder Jodee Rich may be set to shift as he re-casts himself as a social media network aggregator.

Rich is just weeks away from launching the beta version his new enterprise PeopleBrowsr, described as a “deep visual dashboard” which allows multiple online identities and aggregates information from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and Flickr.

While Rich was not ready to discuss the project with Digital Media, until the platform was ready for public engagement, his technical and strategic dedication to the social media sector and involvement with key players over recent months suggest that this is not a just the foray of a digital dilettante.

It is understood that Rich has privately funded his social networking endeavour with the assistance of family, close friends and some former One.Tel business associates. The venture is being heavily pitched to the US market wit Rich flitting between San Francisco and Sydney and employing a team of developers globally.

He conceived PeopleBrowsr in October 2006 as a Twitter based social media information aggregation tool allowing users to create their own walled garden that displays content from user’s friends, their postings, status updates and blog posts while also allowing interaction outside of the users garden that includes streaming RSS feeds, widgets and feeds from random users.

“We want it to become a window on the passing parade of everything happening on the Internet, public YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, Flickr photos and so on. It will be as if the user was sitting in a café and watching the world pass by,” Rich writes on the PeopleBrowsr blog.

The marketing parlance for the project is deeply reminiscent of the One.Tel “dude” branding identity with a tagline including “makes Twitter awesomer” and “why Peoplebrowser rocks,” Rich’s Twitter nickname is even “WingDude.”

The platform will appear in two formats – as a new Twitter multifunction skin- sorting, tagging. Searching and posting ‘tweets’ an as an ‘inside network’ application, to manage search, message existing friends and expand into new networks of friends. Features include The Grid view, a fully customisable dashboard and Active Image which allows for concurrennt video streaming, photo posts, stream and location updates. The application also uses Google maps for live location feeds.

The premise of move away from the traditional text and multi page based web app to build a Web 2.0 tool with everything the user needs on one page, is already being heralded as the next evolution for social media.

Online and social network strategist Laurel Papworth, who also consulted on the PeopleBrowsr project on its early stages, described the trend as a move away from ‘dine-in” social media consumption to a “take- away” model.

“Previously our engagement on sites such as Facebook is limited as a gated community experience with limited interaction with an external audience. Users are now moving towards a take-out model where they take RSS feeds, widgets and selected content to create a unique online presence.”

she adds that its also a faster way of consuming media and a far more targeted and filtered method of getting exactly what you require from the online media flow.

Papworth could not comment on the project directly buts said that Rich had one of “finest engineering minds” she had ever come across. Selected local social media players have also had a sneak peak at the project and believe it prescient and technically well excited platform and concept.

A closed user beta version is currently on the web for viewing by Rich’s chosen social network participants.

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