Today marks the release date of Twingr, the latest entry into the “have your own microblog” world, built by Killer Startups. Communities are started by a single member and anyone can join them. Each member of the community can invite other members to it by email or from harvesting Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook contacts.

Twingr’s status is currently public alpha, which means that it’s open for registration but it’s still very much a work in progress. The alpha nature of the project is evidenced throughout where I find quirks here and there when clicking links and viewing how things are displayed. Issues aside, Twingr has a good start into their project.

The Good

It’s dead simple to create and join communities. You can join either manually or via an invite. Communities seem to be wide open with no privacy options in terms of who can and can’t join. That makes this an unusable option for the enterprise market. However, the overall ease of entry is high – create an account and join communities.

Twingr also supports threaded conversations and dedicated link sharing. If you want to share a link, you enter it into a separate field that doesn’t count against your 140 character limit. The downside is that the link isn’t displayed in an obvious manner, but rather a small button simply called “link”. You’ll also find a small box below it labeled “from web”. Hopefully this means that there’s a desktop and/or mobile client coming.

In terms of settings, you can adjust your preferences for who can send direct messages, who can reply to your Twingr messages, who can add you as a connection and if they need approval, and the option to auto-follow people who follow you.

The Bad

As the creator of the Microblink community, Mike says he’s got no options for administering the community or adjusting its privacy settings. There aren’t any options for removing troublesome users or changing the description or logo. Privacy features are lacking, and they need to be considered more strongly.

Some buttons don’t really work all that well right now. When I clicked on the reply button and entered my text, it didn’t seem to send it; I had to repeat the process and it went through the second time. Mike said he wasn’t able to get it to work at all, but that may have been attributed to the confusing UI.

There are also some discrepancies pertaining to viewing modes. The UI in general is pretty confusing and non-intuitive. When viewing at the root of the community, there aren’t any options for replying or saving updates. What exactly does the save button do? There’s a tab for favorites, but how do I favorite a message?

The searching function is also wonky. For instance, I sent a message with the text of “gratuitous self promotion”. When I searched for the word self, I got no results. When I searched for promotion, my message came up. Also, you have to actually click the Search button because pressing Enter doesn’t submit your query.

Being a community-driven platform means there should be some sort of directory listing for communities. From what I can tell, there isn’t one. I’d have to rely on getting invites from others or by using the search function to join more communities. I’d prefer there be a directory, but the search is a suitable alternative. The main problem is that it’s hard to pin down exactly what to search for. I’ve also had difficulty joining other communities with the initial account I created (it keeps asking me to register).

The Verdict

Twingr has its foot in the door and has plenty of potential. From what we know, there aren’t any other community-driven platforms with this ease of entry and free (as in beer) price tag. If you want to compare it to other services we’ve covered, think of it as an open, less functional version of Yammer.

The underlying impression I get from the site is that it’s intended to be as open as possible. Most of the defaults aren’t very private, but neither is the registration process for joining communities. If you’re fine with everyone seeing your messages (you likely already do on Twitter), then the service will work for you. If you need privacy from prying eyes, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

Screenshots

Privacy Settings

Home Page View

My Communities