I’ve been playing with the betas of ping.fm and kwippy. The both seem like they’re evolving into exceptionally cool services, I’m just not certain they’re services I particularly need. Will they convince me I have needs I didn’t even know I needed, or will they ultimately end up in my folder of neat tools I suggest to other people but don’t use myself. There’s also a folder of crappy tools I don’t suggest to anybody, but neither of these seem to be angling for that dubious distinction in the files.

The kwippy blog sums up kwippy thusly:

In kwippy, the whole focus is on the Instant Messenger. The friends list on the instant messenger is the most intimate friends list you can find, of all social networks. It gives the people in the list immediate access to your attention. People share their joys (i got a raise), sorrows (i flunked my english papers), their favorite links, and thousand other things through their status messages. And all these people also have a list of their closest friends on their list. And like in the real world when a real friend introduces you to another person, the chances that you hit it off are greater. There’s this trust thing which is automatic.

So there – kwippy has a social network which gets real friends, friends you could meet. And it stores all your status messages, which become your emotional timeline.

I’m not sure I want to keep track of my “emotional timeline,” to be honest, but I’ll try almost anything once. More on these, plus the long-promised review of social median soon(ish).