by MG Siegler on September 15, 2009

Screen shot 2009-09-13 at 5.04.30 PMEmail. Twitter. Instant Messaging. Facebook. Those are just four of the most popular ways to communicate online. And actually, the average 23-year-old has 6 different accounts that they check for messages each day. Maintaining and keeping up with that is either basically impossible, or flat-out impossible. That’s where Threadsy comes in.

Launching its large beta today at TechCrunch50 as a free web app, Threadsy wants to take all of your online communication and shove it into a single service. All of the messages directed at you (email and Twitter @replies, for exmaple) will be put into a single stream of message, called the “inbound” column. Meanwhile, all of the activity streams that you simply follow (Twitter, Facebook, etc), will be put into a single activity stream, the “unbound” stream. The result is one service to rule them all.

The great thing about this is that you no longer have to sign into multiple accounts while remembering who is trying to communicate with you. Everyone also has a profile on Threadsy which shows all the social networks you reside on.

While the thought of putting all of your communication in one place is nice, quantity will obviously be an issue. But Threadsy is more than just communication aggregation, it also promises to provide deep context about the people you are communicating with, so you can filter and manage the stream. You can also filter by the type of service (for example, only seeing tweets or Facebook messages).

In terms of monetization, like a lot of other communication platforms, Threadsy will show contextual advertisements. But the service says that unlike something like Gmail, it won’t always show them, and instead will only do so when it could actually help the user.

Threadsy currently looks at over 40 social sites on the web to get this information. CEO Rob Goldman and VP of Engineering Udi Nir demoed the app today at the event.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire

RS: I think this is great for me. But are there enough people who will care about this? But I want it right now!

RG: That’s a great point, we followed FriendFeed closely, but we’re trying to pull all the information that’s required.

DC: This is the PIMP problem (personal information management). I like that this tackles that aspect of day to day problems.

RH: It’s a good communications platform but Google has tried this before. It’s a tough challenge.

SP: It’s beautifully built, but this is a huge challenge. But this looks very good and clean. I’m not a user of something like this, because this is more for power-users, and I don’t think all inboxes are created equal. A Facebook message is lighter than a regular email, and Twitter even less.

RS: How do you make money off the stream?

RG: We think current webmail misses the mark by focusing on low value ads across all message. We only want to focus on 2, 3, or 4 percent of your messages.

RS: What about hooking up with Tumblr or Posterous for curation?

RG: It’s exciting to see what people do with this.

MA: So FriendFeed is dead to your Robert, is this it?

RS: Maybe.

C: It definitely depends on how it feels when you try it out. I feel like I’m cheating on my MySpace, so I think this is brilliant. How safe is this though? Everyone could get everything if they got into your account.

By Techwacky

Editor-in-Chef of TechWacky.com