Guess what the URL Diary.com has been doing since 1996? Not much. But now the owner, a guy in London, is looking to re-imagine the concept of the diary for the Twitter generation. Diary.com has a clean interface, a little like Twitter, but instead of 140 characters you plug in 1000.
As well as text, users can plug in URLs for images and videos which will pull those into your diary. Diaries can be private or shared on the site which is closer to a private or closely shared Tumblr blog (with privacy controls) than Twitter. So this is not really micro-blogging as such since Diary users can find eachother on the system and spin out wider conversations. The site comes out of stealth today but its test user base so far has been mainly women – traditionally bigger diary keepers than men – in particular the younger female base of 16-24year old, and mainly in the US.
Co-founders Peter Brooke (who’s owned the domain since 1996) and Keld van Schreven have raised $600,000 in angel money are going out for a modest series A round later this year.