San Francisco Iminta launches into private beta on Tuesday. Like a number of other startups, you tell the service the various social networks where you have accounts (delicious, flickr, YouTube, Lastfm, etc.) and the service creates a master list of everything you are up to on those sites. Your friends can then subscribe to your master feed, and/or you to theirs.
There are other services that are very similar - FriendFeed (still in private beta) and Plaxo Pulse are the most well known, but others include Mugshot, Readr, 30boxes and Spokeo.
For the most part, Iminta has features that are similar to those services, particularly FriendFeed. There are some differences worth noting, however. Whereas FriendFeed has only a single setting to make your feed public or private, Iminta allows you to create groups of friends and determine which groups see what content. On the flip side, they allow people viewing your feed to strip out some of your feeds. So if you Twitter too much, for example, your friends can choose not to see that, but leave everything else. Iminta also allows you to filter data by type when you are viewing a number of friends, or all of your friends, at once.
It makes for a less simplified interface than FriendFeed, which has its pros and cons. But as you add a lot of friends, the ability to manage the data is, in my opinion, a good thing.
Another thing I like about Iminta, and the reason I’m writing about it, is that the company has been bootstrapped to date by founder Aaron Newton (an ex CNET product manager) - I always like the non-funded startups. Newton says he began working on the site a year ago just because he wanted the product for himself and his friends. He got more serious about it, and left his job at CNET, when he first heard about FriendFeed in October.
You can request an invitation on Iminta now, and Newton says they’ll bring in as many people as they can starting on Tuesday. Once you are in you can also invite your friends - we’ve added Iminta to InviteShare to help you get a quick invite (FriendFeed is here).
Damn, I hate watching optimum online commerical about rapper singing in beach with whores and flashing diamonds.
I’m staying here for a while.
Seems like a cool service, its interesting how many different kinds of web technology comes about from social networks!
Hmm.. this space is filling up quickly. Which is good i guess. variety is always better than no choice.. just a shame that non yet released have really captured what i am looking for.. although i must say the addon mt with a product similar to this is very interesting indeed, if only it was coded in ror and not php..
@ Dave Sherratt, have a look at our site (Lovest.at) on about Wednesday… It’s full of bugs at the moment due to a HUGE deploy this weekend, but hopefully it’ll hit the spot when these are fixed over the next day or two.
It brings friends from a number of social networks together, gives you newsfeeds and you can plug in your email contacts too (and access third party socnet messaging systems).
This side isn’t even really the main service (that’s the social ads model), but I hope it hits the spot (in about two days…)
I’m surprised Profilactic was not mentioned in this article, considering that Nick Gonzales gives the first endorsement on their home page.
still no jobe dude… i’m waiting for your mail
I’m really sick of hearing about all these guys connected to one company, or another, getting reviews here on TC. We all know how valuable a review on TC is, and this is obviously jealousy speaking here, but it seems the reviews are 95% of the time about some venture backed social-network-clone, or some guy connected to CNET or Google or MS who came out with this revolutionary idea that is exactly the same as 8 other networks out there, but because he is who he is, or has a press embargo agreement with TC, they get this kind of coverage.
I’ll always use TC to keep aware of what’s going on in the 2.0 space, but I think you guys really need to diversify the kind of companies and ideas you blog/write about. It’s getting pretty redundant.. at least in my opinion
I’m not sure Iminta really gets it; like other services, they seem to want to be the dashboard on top of all your social networks, and add very little value of their own.
Surprised to see MyBlogLog going unmentioned on your list; they’ve had a who-are-you-on-all-those-other-services section running for a long time, and have opened it up through their API. See here:
http://kentbrewster.com/first-.....oglog-api/
… for a working prototype.
I’m really sick of hearing about all these guys connected to one company, or another, getting jobs here on TC. We all know how valuable a job at TC is, and this is obviously jealousy speaking here, but it seems the reviews are 95% of the time about some guy connected to CNET or Google or MS who came out with this revolutionary job that is exactly the same as 8 other jobs out there, but because he is who he is, or has a press embargo agreement with TC, they get this kind of coverage.
I’ll always use TC to keep aware of what’s going on in the 2.0 space, but I think you guys really need to diversify and give me a job. I can’t even buy a fucking sandwhich. Im getting pretty hunbgry… at least in my opinion
have to agree with #7.
Perhaps you guys at techcrunch could have 2 blogs ?? one for fully funded largesk companies that are either funded by vc’s or are ran by former google, yahoo , ms, facebook , etc etc connected people.
and the other blog for new startups. I may be wrong but when I first started reading techcrunch when it first launched it was mostly unknown startups and revealing the gems. Now it seems to be mainly large companies.
Apart from the catering to your audience that 2 blogs would have , it would also generate additional income for you .
Mike and Co , give it a thought ? perhaps it just techcrunch is now too large ? , thats one of the things I like about techcrunch uk and what used to be vecosys/blog nation in that they came up with alot of smal/ newly launched startup[s.
thanks
The bigger problem other than Michael not understanding journalistic ethics is their lack of ability to call them right.
You know a market space has reached saturation and is past the peak of its bubble when aggregators are all that are left to cover.
Wake me up when you have something interesting to report.
“I always like the non-funded startups.”
All startups should be non-funded.
i agree.. probably because I don’t have a VC behind the kind of stuff I work on, but it’s easy to make money when people throw millions at you.. the tough (and more creative in my opinion) start ups are the ones started because a developer see’s a need that a large corporation is too bureaucratic to fill.. if i had a few million from sequoia or whomever, i don’t think it’d be too difficult to create some web app that met a need and was commercially viable..
@9 ya.. i think a focus on smaller ideas would be a good idea. TC is much more of a tech news blog now, than aything to do with web startups
I can’t believe this. Techcrunch claim themselves professional. Yeah right!!!
Some Techcrunch news have spam. Is there techcrunch spam blocker. You know. Skip articles or block some Techcrunch articles.
I want to block some Arrington, Erick, etc news. They are not seeing things right. They just keep crossing the line. They keep putting bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, and some good guy news.
I want blocking/filtering techcrunch stuff. I don’t always aggree with their option, ideas, and society outlaw. Sometimes, they do get into trouble.
You know… Google Jet.
Well: it strikes me that this particular concept, Iminta, is nothing radical. That’s fine - what was radical about making a new search engine when Google first appeared? Or an OS when Microsoft made DOS?
The bigger problem is the idea that anyone will invest the time and effort in enough social networks to make an aggregator worthwhile. It only simplifies things after-the-fact - you still have to make the effort with all these sites, and most people who are not immersed in Web2.0 hype just don’t.
These insiders seem to be creating sites for each other more than for the market, and that’s not going to lead to profit.
I have been an iminta user for a while and I really find it useful for keeping up with my close friends and finding interesting stuff. I am only following a few people but they are good friends so i want to know what they are looking at. I am not sure how well it would work when it gets like twitter and people have hundreds or thousands of followers because each person can generate a lot of content. So far though, the daily update emails of my friends activity is one of the emails I most enjoy reading in the morning.
Anyway, whereas I am not sure about their business model or what this says about the web 2.0 bubble or social networks or whether techcrunch favors ex-cnet people, I think this is a handy application that you should check out. I should add that I am not affiliated with iminta in any way other than having gotten an invite to try the service through a friend.
While a step in the right direction, my sense is that this isn’t the way managing social activity streams will be handled. I agree with Kent.
As to the other comments, I never thought I’d see the day when a few commenters thought TC was in cahoots with CNET. Get out the tin foil hats.
I’ve been using Iminta for a couple months now. My preferred feature is the daily email digest. I open the email when I want to take a break and I catch up on a close circle of friend’s activities. I don’t miss twitters and flickr postings and I can catch up all at once, in my in box. This way sharing doesn’t control me. I control it.
In fact I’ve started use del.icio.us, digg again and favorting youtube video and google reader items as I know that friends will see them without having to go to those services and see my activities (because most people never do)
I’ve been using readr.com and enjoy that too with a whole different set of contacts.
One concern I have is if I’m pressured to start following too many people will I have to start skimming entries just as I do as my primary sharing sites? Also in the direction of information overload, these services could start letting you follow anyone of your choice, even if they are not using the service themselves, which I think would be popular.
Anyway, I’m almost positive aggregators like these will be used by everyone in a couple years. Keep up the good work.