Esprsso has alpha launched into quasi-obscurity with a decidedly web 0.4 design philosophy.

Basic functionality is feature-complete and now the fun stuff begins. So now that users can add friends, discover neighbors, import sources, create channels, read and forward items… so what? Well, we can develop a sophisticated metacontent layer subsuming these features, silly. What do people want with their esprsso? I’ll tell you:
-clean atmosphere
-conversation with friends and rude intrusions from the occassional neighbor
-attractive women to ogle (for men)
-unattainably stylish men, women, and children to fantasize about (for women)
-pretty pictures with short descriptions

As things currently stand, as Shannon pointed out, we plumb the depths, but we don’t provide much sense of the “breadth” of the community. You don’t immediately see the ugly snivelling creatures in the corner who remind you how great you really are. We provide links to similar people, but not to those who you would like to believe you have nothing in common with.

We also have a system ripe for exploitation by special-interest groups. This is of course our whole concept – an anti-social social networking system. We are not yet another goddamn social-networking service where you have to yet again enter in your personal info and maybe have one or two email exchanges with a old friends who you stopped communicating with in real life for good reason. But a college class or corporate work-group or tightly knit special-interest group have real information-sharing needs that are not adequately addressed by any service out there. Setting up such a group should be a simple matter of picking some channels, picking some people, and setting up a closed-system where the selected channels and people can mix.

But our really BIG next development is extremely simple, top secret, and will bring us in competition with just about EVERYBODY. And I think we can take ‘em all at once.