Nurph, which very recently launched in public beta, is a new exciting site that lets users embed a chat box on any Web site they please.
The service is incredibly simple to use. You go to the Nurph homepage, enter any URL you want into the text box at the top of the page, and the service will redirect you to the site you entered with an embedded chat box in the lower right of the browser window. (Click here to go to a Nurphed version of this page.)
In order to chat, users must sign in with their Twitter account. Though there’s no other way to participate in the chat sessions, at the moment, the limitation works well because it means that everyone already has profiles set up with their name and avatar–no registration required.
What makes Nurph even cooler is that it refuses to be a static experience. Inevitably, when a user in the chat shares a link with everyone, users need only click the link to be redirected to that page with a new Nurph chat window embedded in it. As long as all chat participants play along, everyone could be surfing all around the Web, finding and discussing all sorts of interesting content as a collective.
Rightfully assuming that the ordinary Web user now works in multiple tabs within their browser, the tab with the Nurph chat running will automatically update with the number of new messages as soon as they come in.
What’s most exciting about Nurph is that it seems like it could transform a lot of the noise we find on the Internet, especially on a site like Twitter, into actually interesting and meaningful conversations. On the other hand, that could be an effect of the startup still being very small. If, in the future, the service expands to the point where hundreds of Twitter users turn to a Nurphed version of a breaking New York Times article, for example, the noise could grow overwhelming.
Nurph is a UK-based company with just two employees, co-founders Neil Cauldwell and Paul Horsfall. Bootstrapped at the moment, the startup’s founders are interested in investment opportunities.
Still a service in its early stages, Nurph nevertheless shows much promise in making the Web an even more interactive and community-oriented place.
