Simler Makes Your Online Discussions More Focused

Simler is a new social network that takes a slightly different approach than usual. Rather than following specific people, you follow topics. This is similar to the way your average web forum works, but it’s much more flexible. You can also easily connect with people that share your interests by tagging yourself with those things you would like to talk about.

When you create your Simler account, you will be given the opportunity to add tags. These tags serve two purposes. The first is as an attribute to describe yourself. The second is as a topic of discussion that you would like to be involved in. When posting in Simler, you choose a tag that the post is in reference to. This is what keeps your discussions focused. It’s also possible to have a general conversation with your friends by not specifying a tag at all.

You can add other Simler users as friends. This will cause their posts to show up on your homepage. In essence, you are now following them just as on any other service. The difference here is that you will only see a friend’s post on your homepage if they are posting in reference to a tag you subscribe to. This is another way that you can cut down the noise. The only exception here is if they don’t specify a tag.

The idea of Simler is interesting, keeping your conversations organized by tagging each related message. My only issue with it is that all this could probably be better accomplished via a simple Twitter app. As a matter of fact, we have covered a couple of applications doing just that here at Black Web 2.0, including: Twubs and Tinker. With the advanced filtering capabilities of 3rd party Twitter clients and even Twitter’s saved search functionality, it’s simple to track #hashtags you might be interested in.

Even though it’s features can mostly be duplicated with other applications, the simple interface of Simler could be useful for most average users. I just think it would be more powerful to leverage Twitter’s existing users and tags to make the service more useful and more enticing. I’m wondering what type of ace Simler might have up their sleeve that could push their service to the next level.