web graffiti

Here's an application I want. It's possible today, and it could be a browser plugin, or a web service. (It probably would need to be both to get popular.) I guess it's a lot like del.icio.us and other aggregators, but the idea is to get rid of the concept of the aggregator as a separate site, and instead make it a view on the existing content of the internet.

So, you can make notes on any page, have a friend network, select network depth, and see notes on any page left by others, it's all persistent online, you can switch between public and private notes, and there's auto/community moderation. In effect, a wiki/tagging/social-networking view on the web (which is currently being done), viewable as a HUD on the web itself (which I have not yet seen).

Let me example you. This is what your browser would look like:



So you'd go to some restaurant's site, and there'd be notes left there by ppls. The restaurant did not have to do anything to subscribe, and in fact has no control over the notes, (other than through the community moderation features) If your friends left notes, you'll see those highlighted. You can turn off all notes with a click, if they're obscuring content, or you can turn individual notes on/off, and move them around.

Key features:

• Make notes on any page
• notes are stored per user and per url
• view notes that have been left on the page, by you
• view notes that have been left on the page by others
• subscribe to other ppls notes
• block other ppls notes
• make notes private
• have a friends list
• make notes viewable by friends only
  
• follow graffiti links
• automatically create and strengthen graffiti links
• when viewing, grow or shrink the network depth automatically so that you have interesting content but no information overload
• easily turn on/off all graffiti content
• all graffiti content stored on a graffiti server
• graffiti is accessible from any modern browser, with plugin support for popular browsers.

I'm sure someone is working on this right now.