September 2008

Managing social networks is a total pain. Fortunately for wannabe 2.0 rockstars everywhere, CEO Dewey Gaedcke and his team started Minggl, a tool for managing multiple social networks. I caught up with him downtown to ask him a few questions about it.

Michelle Greer: Social networks are never static. We've all come to love or hate the new Facebook, and people adopt new Twitter clients seemingly monthly to keep up. Every week, some naive VC funds a social network of some stripe hoping it will actually get adopted. How does Minggl plan to keep up with the constantly evolving trends in the social networking sphere?

Dewey Gaedcke: Great question and this is Minggl's sweet spot----we believe that people want to participate in many communities and will frequently move between them. We're not a site, or a tool, or a community---we've built a "relationship layer" that is embeded in the browser so we can facilitate all the social things you do, transparently between communities. You get to "do social" based on how you know someone and how much you care, instead of 'where' they hang-out, or which tools they use. If you think about it, "social" is relationship centric, not tool or venue centric, so the only sensible thing to do is to carry the relationship model with you, in the same way your brain does it. The only point of personal connection between Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace (for you, from a technology perspective) is your browser, so we modify the browser to bring relational/productive benefits to you, everywhere you go on the web. From a technical perspective (if that's what you are asking), Minggl is an API abstraction layer---this means we have ZERO site-specific code in the product.....Minggl support for Facebook (for example) is defined by a little XML file that Minggl knows how to interpret and run. If we want to add support for Plaxo, we just have to create this little text file and ww don't change the core program at all. It's very elegant ;-)

Greer: Minggl allows users to filter statuses from the people you follow based on keywords. What are some applications for this sort of functionality?

Gaedcke: Out of the 400 "friends" you have online, very solid research shows that you can only be truly "friends" with about 150 of them. Of that 150, only about 40 are meaningful (you really care) in your life. And of those 40, it's likely that only a few publish information that aligns with your goals and interests. Do you have time to read the daily menu consumed by 250 distant strangers??? If you do, then use minggl without filters (in this mode, our mStream feature works just like the news aggregators) and read everything. If you don't, then Minggl will show you information from the people you care about first and not waste your time with the rest....or at least save it for when you aren't so busy.

Greer: Twitter seems to be the social network of choice for many prominent people in the social networking sphere. Any plans to expand the Twitter section of Minggl to include the "replies" and "archives" sections?

Gaedcke: We already support replies and retweets. Archive will be coming in the next few months. But micro-blogging is only a fractional part of the social dimension----we believe that people care most about the person and about the message, not whether it goes over phone, email, sms or pony express. So you will see Minggl shifting the focus from "where you hang" and "what you use" (to communicate) and making it about who, what and why----the real essence of social

Greer: What is your platform built in? Should we expect to see Minggl FailWhales?

Gaedcke: Minggl is built on a massively scalable architecture. The app server alone is written in three (Java) tiers, including a clustered cacheing layer. The DB layer is partitioned, load balanced, multi-master and replication aware. You may see Minggl hickup because someone pulled the wrong plug, or a bug slipped through QA, but it won't be for scalability reasons....that I can guarantee.

Greer: What is it like working with the Twitter API?

Gaedcke: Twitter API is great....it's clean, simple and works (when their infrastructure is up)

Greer: I hate managing social networks and like that Minggl integrates them into one sidebar. Do you need more developers so as to appease my need for easier and easier tools to manage social networks? If so, how should they get in touch with you?

Gaedcke: We will be hiring experienced Java and Javascript developers aggressively beginning in the middle of November. They can begin experimenting with our API to build social apps that deal with the ENTIRE friend list (instead of just a slice). Experienced techs can send their resume to jobs@minggl.com (best wait till mid-November). They should also play with the product, and get involved recommending features and reporting bugs at: http://getsatisfaction.com/minggl

Greer: Minggl allows you to tag people with certain keywords. Did I get a "cool" tag and if so, when the hell are we going wakeboarding?

Gaedcke: you received a "genius" tag and this means that minggl will randomly inject pictures of Einstein and Tila Tequila onto your various online identities.

To see how Minggl can save you some social networking headaches, download Minggl here. If you have some ideas for the product, get satisfaction by letting their team know here.