Sunday, June 03, 2007

Tangler - a better way to do forums?

Forums have long been a staple of online communities and online communication.  The basic paradigm of a threaded conversation has long remained the same.  But there is a new Aussie startup called Tangler that's trying to change all of that.

…[blurring] the lines between what you might think of as traditional instant messaging, chat, mailing lists and forums. We’re web-based and topically structured like a forum, but interaction is real-time, like instant messaging.

In other words, Tangler uses threaded conversations to anchor a discussion, but they give you ability to add a lot of rich content the thread.  You can easily add videos, pictures, etc. into the thread you're discussion.

tangler

That's pretty cool, but each thread can also be done in real-time.  That is, using ajaxy goodness, discussion threads also work like an archived IM chat.  Using a separate application called "Notifier" you can track all of your conversations and groups in real-time.

I'm not sure I'll spend a huge amount of time here, but I've been wondering what the next step in forum evolution might be.  I think Tangler is on to something.

TanglerGroup Naturally you can easily create your own discussion groups which can be either closed or open.  Closed groups are by invite only, ensuring a degree of privacy that would be handy for folks in our line of work.

You can watch a demo here, it nicely illustrates what they're doing.

via Web Worker Daily

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This looks cool. Should we consider switching the UMF to this?

Jeff said...

It is pretty cool. It would be hard to have the same degree of control, security and customization as what we have with phpBB. But Tangler is way cooler. Maybe we should think about it. Sign up look around.