VentureBeat

Sydney, Australia’s Tangler is attempting to make online discussion groups more interactive.

In an age already overrun with new wikis, chat room technologies and lively forums, this is marginally exciting. However, Tangler has a special “beta testing” section, where it lets companies foster a niche community of early adopters that likes to test new web applications and give feedback. This could hold promise for fledgling companies looking to score their first users and engage them in a more effective way.

The idea at Tangler’s core is that group message boards like those at Google and Yahoo Groups should involve in-depth discussions and rich media, but happen in near real time. This is enabled by an optional desktop notifier that pings you whenever someone adds a post to the topics you monitor.

Tangler’s interface looks more like a chat room or IM client than a typical discussion board, complete with avatars, text formatting and emoticons. It is also quite easy to embed a video or image. Tangler hopes that its groups will be more than mere chat rooms, and that people will leave longer, more thoughtful posts, but a look at the site shows that this typically does not happen. Tangler also does not currently enable multi-threaded responses that let you to answer one specific post; your entry just goes after the one before it. As a consequence, the whole thing feels like a group chat, albeit one that leaves the entire chat history for all to see. The site also loads somewhat slowly.

As for the Beta Testers section, it’s too early to tell. The idea behind this is that a start-up wanting a more dynamic way to engage its early users will direct them to Tangler, and that these early users will look around and try the other applications with boards posted in the section. Tangler already has about 100 companies with discussion boards there, including JaJah, Omnidrive, Particls, and Ma.gnolia. These get varying degrees of action, ranging from none to moderate. There are some lively boards, like that of the war strategy game Weewar, and it would be terrific for young start-ups if an accessible early adopter community develops here.

This may shrivel, however, if Tangler enables companies to embed Tangler-style discussion boards into their own sites, which would seem like a likely move.

Tangler’s closest competitor is Pibb, which also offers the combination message board, IM, and group chat functions, but is not billing itself as a destination for web product testers or discussion groups. There are also stalwarts Google and Yahoo Groups to consider.

The company is in the process of raising $2 million. It had previously raised $1 million from nameless angels in London, Asia, and Silicon Valley.