Today, Chirp is launching in public beta. Chirp is a screen saver, previously covered here, that lets you bring social feeds from Flickr and Facebook onto your desktop. Other social Websites will be added in the future. “Our purpose is to enable you to stay up to date with your friends without the hassle of logging into multiple websites,” says CEO Eve Phillips.
Chirp will let you subscribe to a friend’s photo feed so that it can decorate your screen. Click on a photo and Chirp will take you to the corresponding Flickr page to find out more. This reminds me of the Slide Desktop application, except that it brings in photos and data from other Websites. It basically brings social widgets outside the browser, something we’ve also seen with desktop applications from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The Sidebar in Windows Vista, for instance, lets you bring all sorts of widgets to the desktop, including online photos albums.
Maybe I’m missing something, though, because there is some smart money in the seed round. Greylock Partners, Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC and angel investors Reid Hoffman (Chairman and founder of LinkedIn), Jay Adelson (CEO of Digg), and Dave Samuel (founder of Spinner.com and Grouper). CTO David Bill is formerly of Spinner. I guess Chirp’s focus on turning social feeds into a screen saver might give it more mass appeal than just a bunch of desktop widgets.
Phillips explains the difference between Chirpscreen and widgets in the following way:
We’re designed to take over your screen and turn your
computer into a display of the social content of your choosing,
automatically updated with content from your friends - your friend channel.Taking a step back, if you separate out what we do into three areas:
content aggregation; filtering; and display, most of those desktop
widgets aggregate and then do a limited display. We’re focused on
having highly relevant filtering and a really engaging, interactive
display of that content, as opposed to a desktop widget which is
designed to be a companion to your desktop activities (browsing,
email, etc.).
What do readers think? Try the beta and tell me in comments.
techcrunch covers topics which z list bloggers like us cover ?
the animation after an image is loaded at which point all the images scale down is too resource intensive… Images also seem to populate primarily on the right side of the screen.
In my experience, screensavers are never watched by the person owning the computer. It can be a great show for those passing by (or love to watch screensavers for fun) though.
Showing my social network content or my friend’s photos for that matter will be something I will never end up seeing.
Unless I like to watch screensavers for fun of course ;-)!
A social screensaver
haha lol. doesnt need to get any crazier 
Really vallue Added Product, Very Nice.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
screensaver are so Nineties… Not only that nobody needs them with tfts, but given the environmental issues, you would want your screen to shut off to power-save mode after a couple of minutes not using it (instead of showing stuff you dont read as you are obviously not sitting in front of it).
Why don’t you write about interesting startups instead?
God I’m so sick of these companies… can someone please create a company with some real value.
I wont be surprised if there if social shoe polishes.
whats the point of adding “social” thing into every app and every website?
wake up, its 2008 already.
Unreal!……I thought we might have issues with seed money. If a screen saver gets funded, then I know we’re golden.
Screen savers work when you are not using your computer, right? How good is a medium of distribution that distributes when the audience isn’t paying attention? It’s like going to a concert where the band only plays while the audience is in the bathroom. Aggregation of happenings within your social networks is a great service, but the distribution model seems like a decision that was made real close to five o’clock on a Friday.
I think you are all missing the target group, this is for college and dorm rooms. The PC is running all the time anyway and with a quick glance you can see new pics, news…. that doesn’t guarantee that it will be succesful but there is a kind of market.
But I’m not sure why anybody would need funding to develop a screensaver that loads data from the internet …. so you have enough to eat the whole week while you are developing your enormous technological breaktrough ?
Not as good as the original:
http://apps.facebook.com/pcnscreensaver
I was skeptical at first, but I tried it out this weekend and I really like it. I don’t think it’s limited to college kids. I’m in my 30s and have a Facebook page but never have time to actually check it. I use Chirpscreen on my home laptop, and when it’s sitting on the coffee table idle, the photos are pretty entrancing. I’m seeing folks I haven’t seen in years, and getting status updates on my co-workers. My next goal is to get my parents using it, to keep up with the family without requiring 1:1 communications
The search result in skreemr is not 100% accurate all the time. Sometimes its very difficult to download songs from this site. So i recommand http://www.woonz.com for searching and downloading song. It’s a complete mp3 search engine. user can listen to online or can download from this site. it’s really amazing. U guyz can give a look in to it. U will love it! woonz.com rocks!
I agree w/ the other poster… very ’90s…
Does anyone remember PointCast? I wonder if the “smart money” is trying to resurrect that idea…
i will never understand the point of interactive screen savers. if the screen saver is on, that probably means that i’m not in front of my screen to view the eye candy. i’ll stick with 3D pipes…
The function of screen to saver is what less it matters at this moment. The important thing is that the social responsibility was taken in consideration, that is exactly those that us needs to be better citizens. Let us become aware!
I spoke to the CEO of Chirp, Eve Phillips, last week when I was interviewing her and she’s smart. I have a screen saver right now that reads the most popular stories on Digg. Clearly, I like the idea so I’m going to try it.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective, as an institution. Functionality is still missing, but what if your institution could make a custom install that had some info already filled out? In addition to pulling the users info from Facebook, what if it could also pull feeds from Facebook Pages? My institution has a “Page” that we update regularly, that info makes it to feeds and mini-feeds, but that info is also available outside of the Facebook log in screen to anyone who wants to see it. So my institutional Page should be preloaded as a feed for my custom build of Chirp.
Also, if an institution has a flickr feed based on a special keyword, that keyword should be preloaded as well. An institution could add text to photos. For example, if the special tag pulls a photo of a Polar Bear, an org could add a layer of text that reads “By 2030, nearly 50% of polar bears will be wiped out by global warming.” The image could include a logo and web address of my org.
Of course this all assumes that people are going to watch their screen saver. I sometimes do. While my job is mostly web based, I sometimes pick up a pen.
Regardless, I’m already putting that info out there, there is no additional work on my orgs part, and I get a few more eyes, which is what my bosses want. The initial investment in the custom build would probably be insignificant.
Yes, very brilliant especially with the current energy crisis as more people are automatically turning off their monitors.
This shows that the important thing to getting VC money is not the idea, but the sales skills
It’s slick. But I checked it out this morning and it doesn’t seem like any of the “highly relevant filtering” is there. At least once I added my Facebook account, it simply ran through my friends’ photo albums - in order. So I got to see all of Sam’s photos from her trip to Italy, and then I gave up.
I won’t deny there could be potential (good points, Apollo). It’s just not even close yet. The following need to happen, in my opinion:
- More networks, beyond Facebook and Flickr. What about Twitter?
- More content, beyond photos.
- More randomness (or relevant randomness, like Facebook’s News Feed).
- Some sort of business model?
perfect. my friend’s pic and what they are doing are showing to everyone except me. ppl gets to know me more when I am not around.
frst, i like the ceo because her name is so similar to mine.
second, the only way this idea makes any sense is if it aggregates enough content so that it is no longer a screensaver, but rather an application that people load for its rich presentation layer and intelligent filtering. what if you loaded the app on purpose to see what content is out there? could it be a beachhead for other services? could this be the direction in which they are headed?
to be honest, between this and mogad, i am not all that impressed with the companies coming out of the stanford gsb (although meebo, trulia and http://www.pokersavvy.com are both quite impressive companies).
Hi everyone - thanks for all the feedback. We started this company because we found that there’s something really engaging about the serendipity of discovering content from your friends (especially without having to do any work!) - and we wanted to spread the experience.
Just a few thoughts to add:
- chirpscreen is indeed a screen saver. Sometimes no one is there to watch it. But, as some people mentioned, sometimes your computer makes a great display device in your office/kitchen/dorm room, and we’ve found chirpscreen creates a fun show - your friend channel - and is also a great conversation starter.
- @Apollo: That’s a great idea, we’ve been discussing offering any third party a mechanism by which they can offer a customized version.
- @Tony: We’re working on a lot more tools to let you make it more relevant (prioritizing friends, feeds, etc.). We experimented a bunch with the core algorithms (and are still doing so) about how much of each person, and each source to show, but it’s a work in progress for sure. And we will be adding more sources.
Hope you all will try it out.
Eve
http://www.chirp.com
Guys, this is not targeted for us. This is for women, who make up 55% of the internet users. I can see just about every female I know using this crap. So, take out all the male users and they still have a healthy target audience. I downloaded it and tried it, very cool idea but not for me. I dont see how they will make money with it, even with embedded advertising it will be hard to get page views.
give us CHIRP on a ***WI-FI ENABLED LCD PHOTOFRAME***
No one sits at their computer with the screensaver on an actually pays attention to the screen. If you are at your computer you are going to be tempted to use it.
Everyone wants to have RSS photostreams on their LCD frames…
(preconfigure a feed and this would be great gift for grandma!)
The value of syndicating social data on a full screen will come from secondary displays around the home or office. RSS news, twitter updates, and facebook style new feeds would be appropriate to display on these secondary displays if they are not invasive and are easy on the eye.
Once again, you’re welcome.
-Zach Weisman
Im with others here ….. I dont see or pay much attention to it. When I sit down to my PC I might see that someone did X and that possibly would make me want to click and go to X site.
Though I do see this useful in entirely different medium. Not a screensaver, but something else…
Maybe Chirp has thought of this too and working towards this…. if not hmmm, I should start a side project
Eve - if I have chirp installed on my desktop, how do I keep my coworkers from accidentally discovering the drunken pictures of my cousin in a bikini at a frat party in college…or, for that matter, drunken pictures of me in a bikini? This seems like there is a large chance that NSFW content will show up on your screensaver.
I think this has a lot of potential, but to really be relevant (meaning I’ll actually pay attention to the screensaver) they need to get filtering right. A lot of what’s displayed isn’t really interesting to me — giant photo albums from distant friends are a good example.
Embedding this product in an LCD frame is a good idea too. It’s also a bit resource intensive - on my dual core MacBook Pro (running XP in this case) it consumes a lot of CPU.
Given the upcoming recession, I bet people will look back on a screensaver that puts the stuff FriendFeed shows you on your desktop getting vc cash as the height of the bubble.
Chirpscreen has addictive potential for those of us on the technology periphery. We have the social network accounts (and read techcrunch) but don’t login as part of our routine. Customized to filter my display, chirp would ease the burden of ‘checking in’ to keep up with friends. Bonus, chirp passively entertains while reading briefs and policies…zzzz.
why did this get funded? Looks more like a fun project someone wanted to share!
I don’t get it. really. I have not desire to even test it out, but eh, I am probably not a target user. The name sounds like a teen perfume.
I don’t see any ’smart money’ investors in the mix except for greylock…
Am i slightly skeptical? yes. will most of these startups dependent on ad revenue be deadpooled? yes. But is this the first startup monetizing the screen saver? yes. am i asking leading questions? hmmm, good question… i need time to think that one over. [still thinking]
ok, my cpu is now chirping (but not audibly like the annoying 5 second audio ad charles dude). this screen saver seems to be innocuous and fun. why not?
It sounds like the majority of folks posting comments have not yet tried the product. Although the screensaver is a basic concept, Chirpscreen is a great twist. Who has time to go check out all the new pics that various friends have posted…why not enjoy seeing them here & there with Chirpscreen. I thoroughly enjoy coming back from a meeting/lunch/whatnot and watching my screensaver, even if just for 5 minutes. And occassionally it also reminds me that I need to call/email that person. I think it’s a great way to help keep up to date with friends especially when you don’t always have the time to have a live conversation.