Back in January, Jason Shellen, a former Googler known for his work on Blogger and Google Reader, launched Plinky, a new approach to blogging that wanted to give users a way to be more engaged in the process. The service got off to a fast start, but talk about it has dwindled in recent months. So now Shellen is ready to start something new. Something that utilizes yes, Twitter.

While Plinky will continue on as a product, Shellen is changing the name of the company to Thing Labs. The catalyst of this change was Plinky acquiring the technology Google Reader co-founder Chris Wetherell has been working on since he left Google. Wetherell is joining the company as the VP of Technology. The rest of the Plinky team will be joining in this new endeavor, and Shellen also tells me that they’ve made a new high-profile hire on the engineering end, that they’re not ready to announce yet.

So what is Thing Labs? Apparently, it soon will offer a new user-facing social media application that makes use of existing social networks. Shellen wouldn’t go beyond saying that it will involve the hot social network of choice, Twitter. It should be out at the end of June, we hear.

The company is also moving its headquarters from the east bay of San Francisco, into the city.