Thinglink, a Finnish born service, has gone through a heavy redesign and landed in a private beta as a whole new service. What was before a product code that linked real world object via web to each other is now a conversational product catalog and platform.
The invitation-only beta officially launched on April 22nd at the Milan Furniture Fair with 10 design brands including Arabia Finland, Design Eero Aarnio, Fokus Fabrik, Helsinki Design Week, Iittala, Harri Koskinen, Martela, Selki Station, Ilmari Tapiovaara Design and Woodnotes. The service was also developed in cooperation with many of these Finnish design brands.
Those of use who remember thinglink.org as a product code service are up for a surprise when they enter the new site. The upgrade that launched in Milan added a whole new dimension to the Thinglink we knew as well as changed the .org into .com. Thinglink.com is a global catalog for design that enables designers, brands, and design enthusiasts to connect and converse on the web.
This is how Thinglink founder Ulla-Maaria Engeström (Yes, the Engeström. She’s Jyri’s wife) describes the service:
Designers and brands who upload their catalogs to thinglink.com can build a community of fans around their products. Design enthusiasts who join the conversation on thinglink.com can post messages about their latest discoveries, ask and answer questions about new and vintage products, and share photos of their favorite design objects in real life settings.
The site reminds me a lot of Sfeed (we covered Sfeed here), an Estonian startup. This is largely due to the fact that the event stream build around products is at the heart of the Thinglink just as it is in Sfeed, although Thinglink is much more comprehensive and sleek, the user-interface is better and the overall look and feel is just right.
Even though Ulla-Maaria Engeström is behind the service itself, I’m guessing that Jyri has something to do with the user-interface design as well as the focus on social object like thinking, namely that you build conversations around products. Along with Jaiku, social objects are what Jyri is famous for and thanks to him the whole social object term entered the web 2.0 world.
Welcome to Thinglink from Ulla-Maaria Engeström on Vimeo.
Thinklink has also just announced a Design In the Wild photo contest where you can win a green Pastil chair that’s on the picture above in yellow. Go check out the contest here. Thinglink was also nice enough to give us whopping 200(!) invites. If you’re quick and want to join, click here to get your invite.
Thinglink is one of the better designed services I’ve seen lately and it’s not only because I’m a big friend of the design products in the heart of the service.
Lumi Group Oy
iasy
Atbrox
Where can i get an invite? The link you put up goes to the sign up page, but there i need to have the invite to register…
Kim,
It should work alright when I tried it. If the link does not work for you try copy-pasting this to the address line http://www.thinglink.com/signup?inviter=villevesterinen
Let me know if it does not work and we’ll try other tricks. Thanks.
Well hey maybe Ulla-Maaria has got merits of her own and does not need to be pointed out as Jyri’s wife.
Got my invite already yesterday ;P I like the look and feel of the site, and the ability to create your own collection. Its a great place for getting inspirations on how to decorate your own flat and office, for example. Hopefully they add more designers and companies in the near future, starting with Finnish ones.
Ville, I tried your link both clicking and copy & paste, with the same result as Kim (running Safari).
Invitation didn’t work for me, either. Same result as with Kim.
So, wait – are we still talking about design as mostly physical objects here?
Marjut,
I fully agree with you. That said, I believe it is interesting for our readers to know that there’s a link between the two services, Jaiku and Thinglink, via their respective founders. Moreover, I believe the influence goes both ways in that Jyri can be equally pointed out as being Ulla-Maaria’s husband.
All,
It seems that the link does not work quite as hoped, so let’s wait for the good people at Thinglink to help us out here. Will let you know in the comment as soon as we get the invitation link to work. Until that you can write to Thinglink to ask for your own beta invite on their website. Thanks for your patience!
The link is working again! I was just testing if Ville has more than 5 friends. It appears he does! (sorry, Ville. I promise you will get as many invitations in the future as you need)
http://www.thinglink.com/signup?inviter=villevesterinen
Thanks Ulla-Maaria! I’m glad I passed the test :) Thanks again for the many invites!
another problem seems to come up when I tried to register and to acquire the invitation. The Service didn’t accept my user name: ###Bjorn. It’s my user name what I use everywhere and I’m not willing to change that. User name can’t have No capital letters(?). Okay, I did settle with that and I did change my user name to small caps and gave it a Go once more. After that It didn’t accept me this time ether because service announced that my name, email etc are already in use. It seems to be that service was mistaking me to me – what was actually correct, but now I can’t register. PROBLEM
Björn,
I would write to them and aks about the problem. I am sure it can be worked out ok, so you can use your preferred user name if it’s not taken already. You can find the contact address on Thinglink site here http://www.thinglinkblog.com/about/
Hope that helps.
Hi Björn, thanks for the note! We were happy to notice that you already had an account on Thinglink. I have reset your password and emailed it to you. Looking forward to see what you have. :-)
As a Newbie, I am always searching online for articles that can help me. Thank you