Slingpage Lets You Share the Web With One Click (500 Private Beta Invites)
Erick Schonfeld
29 comments »
The idea of leaving sticky notes on the Web for others to find has been tried many times, but has never really taken off. Third Voice dotbombed with the idea in the late 1990s, then Activeweave tried it with Stickis (only to abandon the idea in favor for an app called BlogRovr, which was recently acquired by BuzzLogic). The missing element was that there was never a social way to share the Web pages and people’s comments about them instantly.
A startup out of Florida called Slingpage thinks it has figured out a better approach. It lets you “sling” Web pages to your friends with one click, chat about them, and annotate them with sticky notes as well. It is just coming out of stealth mode and TechCrunch has private beta invites for the first 500 readers to sign up here. (Warning: only PC users with Internet Explorer 6 or higher need apply).
Being able to leave a virtual sticky note on a Webpage is kind of pointless unless you can tell people it is there to go and admire. Slinpage joins the most recent band of Web annotation startups, including Diigo and Fleck, that have added sharing and “friendcasting” features to their services. With Slingpage, you can send a Webpage to anyone else in your contact list immediately and even start a chat about it.
Slingpage is an extension for Internet Explorer. (Firefox is coming soon). You can import your contacts from Outllook, Gmail, Facebook, or Yahoo. And, of course, you can also build up your contact list one name at a time. You can only sling Webpages with other people who have also installed the application. The company is working on a Sling-to-email feature to allow the application to spread more virally. And if you Sling a page to a Facebook contact, a message appears in their feed. You can also create a public Slingcast, which is a feed of URLs you collect around a certain topic.
“Every sling becomes a vote, if you will,” says CEO Peter Weinberg, who previously was a technology banker at WIT Soundview (before Schwab acquired it). In that sense, Slingpage is also a little bit like StumbleUpon or del.icio.us. Members save and share URLs, except they do it immediately. When you “sling” a page, a little window pops open in the bottom right of the recipient’s screen. Every page you sling is saved and is a lot easier to find than links you send through e-mail or IM. The startup is based in Estero, Florida and has raised $2.2 million in angel funding. The service will be ad-supported.
I’m still not convinced, though, that it is a better solution than StumbleUpon or del.icio.us for sharing and managing Web pages. The lack of Firefox support means that it is ignoring a group of Web surfers most likely to experiment with new apps. It also needs to develop a widget strategy so that users can distribute their Slingcasts anywhere on the Web, and it needs a better mechanism for Slingcast subscribers to respond with their own notes on a page they want to discuss (something the company is working on).
Curious but what is the browser breakdown for TC? I would imagine that FF holds quote a larger share than say Yahoo.com due to it’s heavy tech focused subject matter. Should they have waited for the FF plugin before exiting stealth mode and hitting up TC or a PR post?
I’ve been using Slingpage for about a month and find it pretty useful. The ability to add notes and to chat while surfing are big pluses, which I’ve used in business for design reviews, competetive research, etc.
You’re right on the money about Firefox support, but I think comparing Slingpage to del.icio.us is a miss, the two offer vastly different functionality in my mind. I often use it for meeting with a distributed workforce (UKR, UK, US) and find it a great alternative to more costly services like Webex. I think of it as more of a real time sharing tool, vs. Stumbleupon or del.icio.us.
Teaming this up with Skype and you’ve got a tool that gives you a lot of bang for absolutely no bucks at all…
Windows Only?
DOA
Why aggravate the techno savvy crowd with an IE only launch? This looks like a case of premature elaboration. I do wish Diigo were easier to use. Reducing the number of clicks to make this work is the answer.
No Firefox? Who uses IE?
No Mac means I won’t use it in daily work habit, so someone else can have my invite. I think Firef.ly has some similarity, but requires the page owner to put it on.
I installed the plugin for IE7 on my Vista craptop and overall it worked fine, although the interface and overall process was pretty disjointed. The toolbar lacked some graphical polish, and the backend interface had banner ads for Ford (what they could wait until launch?)
Also, unfortunately after I closed my IE7 I noticed that it installs a “system tray” icon which stays open even when no instance of IE is. I have to say that I don’t appreciate this and don’t need help launching my IE. Although if I became a power slinger I guess the feature would be handy (hint: It should ask you during install).
looks interesting, but I agree Stumble and delicious are going to be tough to beat. Google seems to be getting into this game more and more lately…
From a collaborative research standpoint, Diigo is the best in my opinion. Works great, public or private grouping, sticky notes, etc. Also, I can share URL’s of my bookmarks/notes with anyone.
Slingcast sounds interesting, as does chat while you go, but other goofs (firefox miss, ads) are keeping me away.
Slingpage understands how people want to share a web page with friends: straight from the browser, without leaving the web page and with little effort.
What’s missing is the integration with the big social networks and blogs: that’s where people share links more and more.
Man this is cool, I’ll have to check it out, thanks
Personally, I think you have to weigh the risks and rewards with respect to waiting for FF compatibility. Getting this type of functionality out there sooner rather than later is important, especially in a market that seems to have the next new thing coming out every other week. Better to get this out there now, then to watch your competitor beat you to the punch. Having 50%+ of the addressable market is not a bad starting point. Also, I think the article may miss the point a bit — this isn’t just about bookmarking, website rating or leaving comments behind like some form of Internet graffiti — this service (which I have been using for a month now) enables REAL TIME communication and exchange of information about webpages, whether for business or entertainment. My wife and I have used this service to plan our next vacation, shopping together online for the best rates and the best places. This isn’t about what “billybob3124″ thinks about a site (or underlying offerings) or even what my friend Bill thinks about a site, this is about what I and the person I am “slinging” with at the moment think about a site, compared to other sites, all in real time, as if we are sitting next to eachother surfing the net on the same computer at the same time. Slingpage closes the Internet communication gap considerably. I digg it, its del.icio.us.ly simple to use.
Sounds …elegant, but not so many features as Diigo
No FF + Florida + Sys Tray Install + Founder from MIVA = Hmmmmmm……
Though interesting because they are bypassing the ‘gatekeepers’ and going straight for the little ole ladies. Lets see if it works.
zenbe also offers excellent sharing of tasks…to do list…is sling is different?
This is great because pasting links in my open IM window was too difficult, and I hate privacy (makes me feel lonely).
No Firefox support?
Nobody will use this
Alright, so the big problem with this tool/company/service is that they have raised $2.25M and looking past the bad interface, weak idea, and management that clearly doesn’t have their target market figured out (which should be more tech savvy users who use FF and not IE), HOW ARE THESE GUYS GOING TO MAKE MONEY???
Major indication for me is to see what a team can produce with the amount of cash available. For $2.25M, I would at least expect a FF plugin, sorry let me take that back, I would expect that even if they had only 300k from an angel’s round.
another install. no thanks.
The Firefox “Amazing Webpage Emailer” (AWE, http://jkn.com/) has allowed so-called “one click” (plus typing addresses, subjects, comments, etc) for years already. With FF’s auto-form-filling features, it takes seconds to email a web page if no message is added.
PS: AWE naturally requires no installation on the receiver’s end and, as it turns out, it can also be used with Internet Deplorer.
Wasn’t there something like this back in 1999/2000? I remember playing with something where people could leave stickies on a website and any user with the plugin would see these stickies?
Are we already recyling ideas from Dot Com 1.0?
Rich
Great application! I love it and use it constantly for business and personal. If someone out there has something better please let me know. BTW – don’t comment unless you have actually used Slingpage’s tool, otherwise as far as I am concerned your opinion is based on ignorance and not experience.
Just a couple notes about the browser issue:
Our site (global flash-based music streaming), 24 hour period this past Monday:
Total Unique Visitors: 182,293
IE 7.0 45%
IE 6.0 26%
Firefox 2.0 21%
Safari 525.18 1.5%
Opera - 1.0%
Other Browsers 4.9%
And the answer to Nigel (@18) is, I’m pretty sure they don’t intend to make money. They intend to build a useful product and sell it to someone (with money) who thinks it would be a valuable feature to add to their existing site/product/app/whatever. That’s the intention of the overwhelming majority of webapp/widget startups.
Thanks to all you TechCrunch readers for giving our beta a try – we are thrilled with the strong response. Your feedback is critical to improving Slingpage at this early stage and we value your insight. Several comments have focused on the need for Firefox support. We hear you loud and clear, we agree Firefox is important and it’s currently in development. We hope you will try us now if you can and revisit in the future as we roll out new features including Firefox support.
@25 - Peter
I really wish you would of had this FF ready. I have A.D.D. and will never come back to your site. Not cause it’s bad, but I will forget and don’t have a sticky note to remind myself. - Maybe when you have it ff ready, you can have another 500 invites and TC will let us know.
I have already forgotten about this company.
- I need sticky notes!
I like the new beta of http://www.fleck.com better.
Sounds a bit like A.nnotate (which is cross-browser with no plugins, though you do have to add the bookmarklet if you want one-click annotation).