So what's the point?

MT: Weblin is a mashup of Instant Messenger and Second Life. Surfing on the Internet is now coming to life through social browsing: users, depicted by their own personal virtual images, or Weblins, are visible to other Weblins visiting the same website at the same time. With just one mouse click you can start a conversation with another avatar. Weblin works on all websites, including YouTube, Google, eBay and Facebook -- bringing people with the same likes, interests and needs together and making every website a meeting place. Weblin provides animated avatars to express one's self. Where you thought you were alone, you will be surprised to find others with similar interests.

How popular is it currently?

MT: Weblin has been available in Germany since mid-2006, and is now available in all major European languages. In April of this year the company launched in the U.S., and has already received significant user traction. Weblin is on a fast track to exceed a million users by the end of this year, and targets a progressive 20-35 year old audience.

How do you monetize Weblin?

MT: Weblin plans to monetize the service through virtual goods sales, advertising and custom integrations with third party communities. For communities, Weblin is an ideal tool to stay in touch with users when they are not on the site. With Weblin they can monetize their traffic throughout the web, communicate with their community at any time, and even pull them back for special promotions and events.

Why launch a lite version?

MT: Weblin’s full download version enables users to experience Weblins on any webpage. Weblin lite was created to quickly help users understand and appreciate Weblin. It requires no download and can be launched with one click. It is ideally suited for websites that would like to visualize traffic, communicate with their audience, and encourage their readers to interact with each other.

How do you deal with the issues of privacy? Do you keep any metrics or details on people's surfing habits?

MT: Since launch, Weblin has adhered to stringent privacy laws in Germany. As such, Weblin never keeps any personally identifiable information. The location of the URL is one-way encrypted, and this encryption serves as the basis for displaying Weblins (The server matches Weblins with the same encryption, without knowing which location the encryption consists). Not even the company knows what web pages users are being visited at any given time. In addition, all conversations fade away after a few seconds. Finally, Weblins has an “invisibility cloak” feature, which lets users surf any site without being seen by others.

You've said future versions of Weblin will "allow you to liberate existing avatars from other virtual worlds including, Second Life" - Can you discuss that?

MT: Everyone at Weblin is a huge fan of virtual worlds, and all of us are a part of various virtual worlds. We intend for Weblin to become a tool that unifies virtual worlds across the web. We are already in constructive talks with select virtual worlds about Weblin integration. This integration would allow virtual world avatars to “walk out of a confined community into the open web”. Technically, we are working on a single-sign on solution that fully integrates Weblin into the virtual world. This way, users can update their avatar, and the corresponding Weblin automatically gets updated as well.

How else do you expect to develop the system in future?

MT: We are excited about the trajectory that we are on, and we are thrilled about the daily user feedback that we receive. Our community is very active, and they have strong feelings about features that we should introduce. The next set of features will include tighter integration with existing social networks (such as Facebook), and more features that will enable users to meet Weblins with similar interests.