Weplug Social Network Launches: Where’s the Beef?
Jason Kincaid
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Weplug is a new social networking site out of France that aims to combine the best parts of Twitter, Facebook, and geo-location. The site has just entered public beta, and is available on the iPhone at the same URL.
Weplug has a clean interface and full featured (if somewhat generic) social networking functionality. Users can add their current status and location to a “lifestream” (basically a list of recent activity), which is syndicated to others through “friendstreams”. It’s all pretty familiar stuff for anyone that’s used Facebook for any length of time, but there are a few key differences.
For one, Weplug promises to release an API that will make its micro-blogging platform accessible to outside programs and devices (think Twitter). Weplug also plans to include auto-location features on its iPhone version of the site. Auto-location doesn’t work yet, but Weplug’s developers intend to use the iPhone’s triangulation feature (and eventually GPS, when it becomes available).
The site is still very much a work in progress. The basic social networking functionality works well enough, but the promised autolocation feature and Twitter-esque API are still a ways off. It’s hard to gauge how well Weplug will do abroad, but to stand a chance stateside its going to need to implement these features soon. As it stands now, Weplug is a nice looking site that few people have a reason to use.
Weplug sprawls a number of well-established spaces. Their competition includes Loopt in the social GPS market, Twitter in micro-blogging, and a plethora of social networking sites.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
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