Toodoo is a new interesting Russian web 2.0 project set to launch during my absence. It’s a social network that aims to join different sites’ regulars, gradually growing into an interesting catalogue of links gathered by simple users.

It takes less than a minute to register. Email needs confirmation. Then you can add your personal information to your profile in a free form. You can also give your location, place of work, school and tag your interests. By these fields you’ll be able to search other users. However, it’s not the essence. The main thing here is that you share your favorite sites (upload using opml supported).

Every author can add his site to the system. If the site was added by another user, the author can claim his rights. The authorship is easily proved by putting toodoo code on the site. There are different code versions – you can choose either visible buttons and reader counter or invisible authorization line. The sample of user counter is shown on every Internet Pieces page (at the bottom of the side bar). As the author you can give your site description and tag it.

So every visitor surfing site catalogue can view its readers either separately or as a very interesting statistic report (see example). Moreover it’s enough for the site author to install a special WordPress plugin or use openid or typekey (openid analog for movable type) to let toodoo users leave their comments without login. I think it’s a great idea, which can easily gather blog authors and readers around toodoo.

Toodoo has a great looking design. Its minimalism (in the best tradition of web 2.0.) appeals to me much. I also like constantly appearing yellow tips which can answer any possible question. Only one thing isn’t clear to me…Why the right part of the “about project” section is given in a strange font used nowhere else on the site?

The only one serious fault which I can find here is so-called “comby mistake”. I don’t find it very handy when instead of opening a link (which seems to be a usual one) you get a dhtml pop-up where you are to choose one of the variants. It makes the process all the slower. There two ways out:

• make the link (user name) differ from others. (Yes, I know that it’s already marked with an icon and differs in print), but imho it’s worth changing the color (even two colors depending on gender) and underlining (a dotted line instead of a straight one). It should be clearly seen that it’s not a link but a button offering additional information.
• make dhtml pop-up appear not after clicking but after hovering the link for two seconds.

There are some more trifles: I didn’t like the way “view users list” function is organized; back button doesn’t work properly. But it doesn’t matter much. The lack of site names is a bit surprising. I see that it’s done to allow users to add sites easily and quickly… but let the author edit the name at least.

As for developing, authors certainly have plenty of ideas themselves. I think Ziki is worth mentioning here. Why not complete author’s profile with rss feeds of his site. As for users, they would be able to add rss feeds from fotodia (russian flickr analogue) or del.icio.us… So it gives an opportunity to make an aggregator which will gather all feeds read by a user on a page. (somebody did mention the lack of aggregator as far as I remember).

I won’t give much attention to such usual social network functions as search (by city, interest, place of work), visualising users relations, internal messaging system, personal network etc They are fulfilled to the best advantage but they are not essential for toodoo.

I showed this post to Viktor Zakharchenko (one of toodoo developers) and he gave his comment:

“We don’t consider toodoo to be social network. In our team we don’t like all these worn-out phrases that some people even don’t understand. Toodoo is a social tool which provides communication between sites readers. For that matter there is no difference to us whether it’s a personal blog(about 20 readers) or a big portal ( with thousand of users per day). It’s worth mentioning that toodoolisation initiative (a recourse reader club creation on toodoo) shouldn’t necessarily come from its owners. Readers can also make a club. And it’s not wise enough to ignore readers’ opinion. Ask marketing guys!

We think that todoo is the first attempt to make a portrait of the resource according to its audience (both directly and figuratively). We don’t only “take” (web projects data) but also “give” (first of all tools for communication). We are not used to boast of new functions before introducing them but toodoo has something special in store for chat-lovers.

As far as you can see from this article I like this service very much. I recommend all readers to register and add «InPi» to the “I read” section (InPi on toodoo and my toodoo profile). And don’t forget to leave your comments on this service bellow.