The company, which has been in invitation-only beta for months, riffs on the standard Twitter interface by automatically displaying tweeted images in line with the standard 140 characters and relengthens all those pesky shortened urls.

In addition to opening its “expanded” Twitter interface to the world at large, Brizzly is offering an on-the-fly translation tool (based on Google Translate) for foreign tweets, which it says will help users discover new information and gain context.

AllThingsD.com has learned that besides opening the front door to the public, the innovative start-up just grabbed former FriendFeeder and current Facebooker Ben Darnell for the team. Ben was an early Google (GOOG) employee and worked on the Google Reader team with Thing Labs founders Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell.

Here are two screenshots–one off Brizzly’s new public beta offering and one of the translation feature:

Big news often comes in small packages and BoomTown was all over the little moves that meant big stories this week. Kara covered a massive redesign of Microsoft’s MSN homepage that follows the old car-racing-mantra-turned-Web-design ethos: Add power and lightness. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when BoomTown covered the end of the Skype ruckus. All is forgiven, and all it took was a sizable stake in the company and seats on the board. Kara rounded things out by running a quick post about a spankin’ new feature from AllThingsD: Every Friday, the just launched “Almost Famous” will cover interesting start-ups through the eyes of their chief geeks. Kara’s all about geek love.

Digital Daily isn’t usually big into bean-counting, but this week the numbers were where it was happening. The first sales figures came back from Apple’s iPhone launch in China, and the numbers weren’t good. As of pub time for the post, only 5,000 iPhones had been (legitimately) purchased. If the Chinese numbers were a picture of modesty, the App Store’s numbers were parading through Time Square in an orange jumpsuit singing Eddie Grant’s “Electric Avenue.” The two-year-old App store’s epic popularity has pushed its already outsized download numbers past the two-billion mark. Not to be outdone with unprecedented flash, Google (GOOG) violated its own nonrule late in the week and ran a semi-ad on the Google homepage. You say ad, they say synergy, but at the end of the day it was a direct promo for Motorola’s (MOT) new Droid, which runs on Google’s Android platform.

MediaMemo started the week off right with a fresh bite from Apple (AAPL). Peter covered the revamp of Apple TV, which will now be offered for $30 a month. News from News Corp. was no surprise this week, when MediaMemo brought us the story that the media empire (and AllThingsD’s uber-parent company) was doing fine as long as you only pay attention to cable and movies. Broadcast and print? Eh, not so much. Finally, Peter asked a few probing questions of Google CEO Eric Schmidt in regard to his company’s suspicious addition of a “blog” tag attached to some Google News postings. Schmidt speculated, but the ultimate answer wasn’t, as he suggested, because of your mother.

Deep in his Personal Technology bunker, at an undisclosed location somewhere in rural Maryland, Walt got to take a crack at the new Motorola Droid this week, and his response was, well, very positive. He praised the Droid’s exceptional battery life and call clarity, even if the touchscreen wasn’t quite up to the iPhone bar. All in all, he said it was a win for Verizon (VZ) and the Google’s mobile OS.

Mossberg’s Mailbox continues to fill with questions about the speculative Apple tablet. Walt offered some other sage advice about making the Windows 7 switch with 64 bits, and what to do with all that grief over the death of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Outlook Express.

Katie was sweatin’ to the newbies this week, with an energetic review of Fitbit, a wireless fob for tracking calories and exercise stats. The Bluetooth headset-sized clip attaches to your waistband and uploads your activities to the Fitbit Web interface, where you can track how many calories you did or didn’t burn. You can also add water consumed and calories eaten. The Fitbit has been shipping since September, but won’t appear on retail shelves until after the holidays. No word yet on if it will include a “Cheesecake Factory” tab to the interface so as to allow for calorie counts that require exponents.

Like any good gadget lovers, we are all about the small and mighty here at AllThingsD. Stay tuned in with your RSS reader, Twitter feed or the good ol’ homepage. We’ll keep bringing you the little things you need to know.

This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader, one of many in the hot status update arena.

Who: Chris Wetherell

What: VP of Technology, Thing Labs, creator of Brizzly.

Why: Brizzly is a Web-based social media software client, for microblogging sites like Twitter or Facebook, expands attachments automatically and allows users to describe and define the trending topics for all its users to see. It’s in invite-only beta.

Where: @cw (Twitter); massless.org (Wetherell’s personal blog); San Francisco (HQ for Thing Labs and Brizzly)

Who else: TweetDeck, Seesmic, TwitIQ

Five Stats You Won’t Find in his Facebook Profile

Worst Job: Assembly line at Fujitsu, making rack servers

Has a Geek Crush on: Mihai Parparita, Google developer in Boston

Gadget of the Moment: Roku’s digital video box. “It’s got Netflix, You Tube and TV. Damn.”

Wishes There Was an App for: The legal arena. “They need to, like, use a computer.”

Fails at: Anything related to email

Bio in 140 Characters

From Beaverton, Ore. Dropped out of Berkeley. Got hungry as an indie rock drummer. @Google Reader. Left Google, invented Brizzly.

The Five Questions

Why should I care about Brizzly?

It depends on what you’re looking for. If one of the things that interests you is how a large community is experiencing life–I mean really interested in the community and not just the idea of your friends–then Brizzly does that a little more easily than other things. [Brizzly's assets are] no small difference for those who are interested in it.

Why are all Twitter-related logos, including yours, so darn cute?

Yeah, we’re a little cheeky, right? I think it’s probably just because of a pendulum swing. I mean, the last thing [Thing Labs' CEO Jason Shellen] and I worked on was the exact opposite. Google Reader is not cuddly. It’s friendly, but cuddly it isn’t. The other thing is, we were hoping to try what strong branding is like–in terms of anthropomorphic animals. The bear design [was drawn by] both Jason and [Twitter Co-founder] Biz Stone.

What can we expect from Thing Labs and Brizzly three months out?

We will have at least three richer sets of experiences, some of which include entirely different products all connected through our letsbetrends.com API.

Every geek has a memory where they saw something new and had to say to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours?

One big one for me was at Google–it was my first day and someone says, “Hey, have they taken you to see the robots yet?” I was like, “Hahaha… No.” They took me to this building where there was a room filled with these Rube Goldbergesque mechanical devices. Large cages with metal bars and wires, culminating in this ball in the center. This girl climbed into the thing. She put her feet in these stirrups and sat in this weird chair, and then this book slides out. The girl started tapping her feet on this base drum pedal and doing this thing with her hands, and then the book slides away [they were scanning the books]. I was like, “What is this?” and they said, “Well, this is Ocean [the internal name for Google Books].” What struck me was the scale. It was clear to me that they were going to scan ridiculous amounts of information very, very quickly, and I realized: Whoa, THIS is very different.”

Are you really competitive with rivals?

I just don’t have that kind of fight in me. I mean, I want to kick my own ass. I know there are lots of guys out there who can totally drop the names of someone they want to just crush. I just don’t have it. I get more frustrated with me, more than anyone else. I’m like Jim Carrey in “Liar Liar”: “I’m kicking my ass.”

The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091106/almost-famous-brizzlys-chris-wetherell/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091106/meet-drake-meeting-brizzly-a-spanking-new-atd-feature/ http://allthingsd.com/20091106/meet-drake-meeting-brizzly-a-spanking-new-atd-feature/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:03:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20339

Today, All Things Digital debuts a new feature called “Almost Famous” in our Voices section.

No, it is not about Kate Hudson and nascent rock stars.

Well, you might meet geek rock stars to be.

Focused on innovative, interesting or just plain odd start-ups, we thought it was a good way for ATD readers to get a gander at some up-and-coming ideas and trends.

We cover start-ups, of course, on the site, but–given that we have a small staff that breaks a lot of big-company news–not on a regular time frame.

So, while we are no good at predicting what will work and what will not and who will make it and who will fail, every Friday, Drake Martinet will be paying a video interview visit with, asking some questions of and gleaning a few pertinent stats about a wide range of companies.

Here’s our first effort: Chris Wetherell, creator of Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader.

The San Francisco start-up, which just rolled out support for Twitter lists last night, is also just wrapping up a new $600,000 round of funding, according to Jason Shellen, CEO of Thing Labs, from which Brizzly sprang.

Brizzly had already raised $1.5 million from Polaris Venture Partners last year. Now it is getting more cash from investors such as Ron Conway to further its software and other efforts.

But don’t rely on BoomTown for info about Brizzly–check out Drake’s take.

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