Hi I'd like to show you some stuff I've been working on. I started with the idea of a site where you could type anything, any word or phrase and it would take you to a page where you could post something, then other people that typed the same phrase would see the posts and add something. I started playing around building a working prototype. Over time it morphed into something different, I added and deleted features and changed the site's layout and mechanics constantly. It ended up being a more complex application with a private messaging system, comments and command driven operations. The concept is simple. There are 3 columns, the left one is where the pm's reside, in the center are the posts, and the right one are for the comments. There is a single text input field, you type something and you enter a channel with that name. In a channel you can see the latest posts and their comments, you see only one post at a time and change switch between them with the on-screen or keyboard arrows. To make a new post you paste a url and some optional text. The url is automatically converted to the appropriate media (imgs, videos, links). To comment the post you're seeing you type ! at the beginning and some text. There is no friend system, you can pm anybody. To pm someone you type @username and your message. I added other commands like a calculator (calc Math.PI * 54 /567), whoami and seen. You can save personal notes (note some note to save) and see them by entering the notes channel. The color theme of the site can be changed by entering the theme channel. You can filter posts by (top new and fav) There is a summary of all the commands in the help channel. Also it's worth noting that everything works in a single page load, everything is handled underneath by ajax.
Check it out at http://radnation.com
I made another site that also uses the channel concept but it's much simpler, without pm's or comments and posts are shown vertically with scrolling. Commands available are written in the left column. I couldn't decide on what layout I liked the most so I created both.
Check it out at http://gsick.com
About the channel concept. I see them as a way to go somewhere were you expect to see certain content, or certain users. Over time channels develop a culture of their own and users visit the channels they find pleasing. There's also less cohesion since there is no following system to maintain.
I had a lot of fun and learned a lot developing radnation and gsick. Although I haven't received much traffic apart from a few friends. I realized getting users to find and use a website is much harder than I thought, or I'm really bad at it.
This is why I write this with excitement because maybe one person out there will read this and try them out.
Any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated!