Aswath Weblog

Uncola Nuts in EnThinnai

In case you did not notice, I am also maintaining another blog where I write about my new venture EnThinnai. This application has lots of many interesting twists and new features. I would appreciate if you add that blog to your list. Today, I posted the following entry there.

In a whimsical mood, I had tagged EnThinnai to be an un-social networking application, in the spirit of uncola campaign from the 70’s. Many didn’t react positively to this tag line as they were equating to “anti-social”. So we have decided to disuse that tag line, even though it has been a conversation starter. Since the original commercial is a personal favorite of mine, I want to share it with you and explain why I first thought of that tag line.

You see, EnThinnai has many of the features people associate with social networks – social graph, Presence information, sharing digital life like photos and videos. So it is “wet, wild … and all that.”

But it has lots of uncola nuts. For one thing it uses OpenID exclusively for identification. This means, users do not have to go to a third party for assigning user name and be dependent on them for ever. Your friends do not have to be registered with that third party to be declared your “friend”. There is no walled garden anymore. Or rather, any wall that is there, it is erected by you and not an external party.

Second, your network is under your control. All the data – your social graph, the data you have uploaded to be shared with your friends and the Attention Data are all yours. You do not worry about losing control of the data or ways of porting to another place and all that.

Like this there are lots of marvelous little things. Try and explore the features of EnThinnai. You will say, “Marvelous! Absolutely marvelous!”