This is the kind of thing that I love to read.

I love QIK.  And Justin.tv, and Kyte, and all of these kinds of mobile/personal/broadcasting tools.  The more the merrier, I say.

Which is weird, because I’m still firmly reliant on Old Media to pay my bills.  About 80% of my time is spent writing and pitching and dreaming up stuff for the kind of television screen you can’t QIK to.  

When Tim and I created Yurth, that’s sort of what we envisioned.  (Well, not at first: at first we thought we were going to create a video Craigslist.  Part of doing anything, though, is learning how to shift and surf and improvise and respond to what’s out there.)  We’re still trying to do that: to create a place for a video-based, phone- and webcam-based global conversation.  

Part of our thinking was to strip out as much of the text-based stuff as we could: just keep it simple and visual (a map; a row of videos) so that people who don’t live in the United States and who may not feel confident about their written or typed English – and let’s be honest: most Americans shouldn’t be all that confident about theirs, either – would still be able to interact and join in the conversation.

We’re not there yet, obviously.  We’re still trying to raise a little money here and there to finish out the features.  And since neither one of us really knows how to open the hood and fix stuff ourselves, it’s a challenge.

But it’s nice to know that there’s competition out there, that other smart people are thinking along the same lines.

It’s called being “directionally correct,” which is a lot like being actually correct, except that there’s no money in it.