Today heralds the launch of really cool new service called Socialight which combines some of the popular features of online social networks with "geotagging" capabilities to allow users to tag places and things as they visit them or locate and learn about places based on their location. Sounds a little confusing no? Rather than try to explain just how cool Socialight is, EMERGE decided to go straight to the source and asked founder Dan Melinger a few questions about this incredible service. We suspect it may just be a really big hit.

1) Dispensing with the official PR line, what is Socialight and who is it intended for?

Simply put, Socialight creates a new type of communications channel that takes advantage of what's special about the mobile phones we know and love; they've got tools for media capture (camera, microphone, keyboard) and media display, they're very personal devices and get taken with us everywhere, and they're increasingly location-aware. Socialight is a platform, built upon a social network, that capitalizes on these attributes to let people share, discover, and connect around place and other shared common interests. It's pretty easy to use and it's really for anyone who wants to connect with others and exchange the ideas and information that are important to them.

A key innovation is the Sticky Note, a rich-media note in a set location that can be shared with friends or the world - while mobile, on the web, or via an API [application programing interface] using push- or search-style interfaces. With push, when a Sticky's coming from a contact or an opt-in channel, we can actually buzz the phone in your pocket when you're nearby.

Editorial content creators - be they entertainment or information publishers, marketers, or artists - are also important parts of the Socialight ecosystem. We give them tools that let them publish to affinity groups created around their content and brands.

2) Technologies like RSS and geo-tagging sound like they require a high end handset to use. What are the requirements for users? Does the geo-tagging require GPS-enabled phones? How do you address the potential "Big Brother" critique of such services?

It may sound like it, but we've built a platform that makes creating and accessing geo-tagged content that's published, then sucked down from RSS feeds on the lowest common denominator handsets. If you're building something built upon a social network, it's important that your social network can actually use it! And I know most of my friends don't have "smartphones". Socialight is accessible via text message (SMS) which pretty much everyone can do and mobile web (WAP) which a large and quick-growing number of people can use. Very soon, we're going to be launching a mobile application to install on your phone (it's in internal testing). It gives you a really slick interface onto Socialight, but the platform and its features are compelling and useful without that. We expect to see most people using the simpler interfaces for the near future.

If we don't have access to so-called location-based services - provided by mobile carriers and the like - which pass location information onto us, you can just geo-tag by manually entering an address or intersection. It turns out people are usually not in strange, new places anyway, so often just telling Socialight I'm at one of my saved places like "the mall" is enough to surface interesting new content from friends and publishers.

One thing we specifically don't do is "friend tracking," like some of the mobile products that have been launched recently. On Socialight, you only give up your location to others actively - when you specifically create a Sticky Note. And when you do, you decide who can see it - everyone, just your social network, or just yourself. So when you want to be seen or found, you can be; otherwise, you can stay private.

3) Socialight is described as a "social network" but its feature set seem more aligned with conventional Wikis rather than social networks (apart from the opt-in channels). Are sticky notes viewable to all users or just folks within the poster's social network?

Our view on social networks is that they're just a platform upon which to build interesting applications. A social network in and of itself is pretty useless, but once you put something on top of it - be it music sharing, dating, photo sharing, or local content sharing - it gets interesting. What we're doing does also have a lot in common with wikis. This is the age of the mash-up, right?

It's up to you to whom Stickies are available; you decide between everyone, just your contacts, or just yourself.

4) Socialight is a great service that will undoubtedly be of massive use and appeal to users, especially as the user base grows. How does the company generate revenue?

Glad you think so! The bulk of our revenue comes from 2 types of content: content that we get paid to surface (like advertising) and content sales. Soon after the launch of this new version, we plan to add relevant advertising to Socialight - kind of like the Google AdWords you see on the sides of the pages you search. We will also enable content sales through our system for publishers who set their own prices and sell their content via our platform.

One thing we'll never do is push unsolicited advertising to our users. It's either coming along with content you've opted in to receive, or you've opted in to receive content from that specific creator - something about which the experiential marketing folks are really excited.

Socialight is free to use. Sometimes, the user is going to have to pay for access to the infrastructure - text messaging, data, location-based services, but we don't see that as a big revenue-driver for us.

5) Can you discuss some of the partnerships that are in the works as well as some of the additional functionality that is tantalizingly hinted at in the launch PR?

The best way to find the content and features on Socialight is to explore yourself. Just go to www.socialight.com and check it out on the web or your cellphone. We've got a couple of pretty exciting content partners who are part of the launch, like WCities, the guys who provide a lot of the content for Yahoo! Local. Then there's fun content like Movie Locations Guide, which let's you stumble upon the real-world places where films were shot.

One of the coolest things about Socialight is how you get content in and out of the platform. Any person or company can publish to Socialight. For example, in addition to using the website to create, you can have it pull in your own Flickr stream of geo-tagged photos. On the outbound side, you can grab a Socialight widget and place it on your blog or MySpace page to show others what you're up to and what you care about through your latest local Stickies.

EMERGE thanks Dan Melinger and the Socialight team for taking the time to answer our questions. Expect more on this fascinating service in the coming months.

It appears you don't have Flash installed.