Like you, I have real hopes for Howwl.

I don't entirely dislike Facebook. It's almost universal popularity has, at least, made it possible for me to maintain contact with a disparate collection of people, most of whom would never have joined Cix - and wouldn't have liked it if they had. And the fact that it's person-centric means I see updates about what all my contacts are doing without having to leave it to chance that I might see something they posted if I read a certain subject-based group. The interface is horrible, though, especially in private messaging. Better if you use Safari, which has the clever ability to grab the corner of a text input box and stretch it. But I prefer Firefox, which doesn't have that, and text you're typing can fall out of the bottom of the box for a line or two so you can't see it. Very poorly coded.

The other thing I dislike about Facebook is the bombardment of stupid games. I suppose as far as its makers are concerned, it's a way to keep people on the site, and if you're logged in, your friends can pop up and chat to you. I leave it logged in all the time anyway, but I wish there was a button I could click to indicate that I'm not actually at my computer, so you can leave a message, but I won't see it until I get back. Some online chat systems have that.

What's likely to make Howwl successful is learning from all the complaints about all the other systems. :-)

Facebook shows people who are online but not active, as a crescent moon, rather than a full moon which is I guess for those who've recently been active.

This is, of course, very true. But there's the problem of people having different complaints and wanting different things. I aim to keep Howwl focused on conversations being the primary function, and not falling into the trap of feature creep.

It's a fundamental weakness of highly-structured systems. One of the ideas behind Howwl is that it's open, in that you can follow people, tags, or just says. Everything should bleed into everything else, which is closer to how people have conversations in the real world, after all.

Exactly so, and that should make Howwl very engaging.

Do you still want more beta testers? I mean, should we spread the word?

The plan is to let Howwl grow organically, and to adjust things as it goes.

Our local council uses it as a message board, and during the peroid of snow and ice it was very useful, it also alerted people to where they could report holes in the roads after the bad weather.

The local Arts Society puts up their events as do other local community organisations.

Many Companies have a twitter prescence, so it not just a vanity thing, I seldom post on twitter, but I do follow several interesting people.

I don't really like facebook as the interface is appalling and the games stuff is annoying for me - I appreciate others enjoy the games.

Sadly I just find cix deppressing these days, and have been avoiding it, for health reasons.

Of course it isn't just about threading (though it is important). Howwl will have a smartphone version of the site coming in a few weeks or so with the first API calls coming soon after that.