Whether it was their intention or not, the “GUI statement” is a defining theme for the new Microsoft spinout social network.

Every flow, from the registration, navigation to the opening of a new window, is different than what you have been used to. For the first few minutes I felt like I landed in widget land. I am not implying this is bad, it just takes a while to adjust to.

A few notes from my brief first impression:

1. Taking a brave GUI direction has its hitches. I once got totally lost in my lateral browsing trip and since there was no traditional use of the browsers’ back and forward keys it was hard to get oriented. I finally pressed “home” and had to guess my way back to someone else’s page. Suggestion - if you are doing an application that is totally based on flash provide a ‘path memory’ or some other type of ‘bread crumb’ mechanism.

2. Free form windows do provide freedom and personalization options that are beyond the boring drag and drop options offered by Netvibes or other me2.0 website around, but in extreme cases there were so many of them (widgets) open that i got dizzy (or maybe I’m getting old).

3. First time run - an often underestimated process was thought of very well, maybe too well. I got to the stage where I wanted to just start and the website still took me by hand from one point to the next.

4. Eco-system - bought myself a nice background for 0.40 Waller cents. I could see this picking up. If Second Life got people buying virtual real estate for money why not here

5. Advertising free environment - in the words of Kozmo Kramer “Its very refreshing..”

6. Question - what’s the plan for mobile? i think all social networks today need to plan for mobile access and interaction. Mobile is part of our life - it needs to be part of my social network.

My recap is as follows:

I have personally been part of many projects that wanted to take a leap, planned a leap, sketched a leap but eventually just didn’t do it. There are always 1000 reason why not - “people are not used to it”, “the CEO doesn’t like it”, “we don’t want to be first”, “its great but lets do the regular version and leave that for future versions (which are never done), “lets do the funky design in a special tab we’ll call “the lab” and on and on - you name it, the excuse exists.

What I really like about Wallop is the guts! The guts to try something new, the guts do to it all the way and not half assed, the guts to leave advertising out and build a whole eco-system/marketplace before they have critical mass, the guts to create a currency (Wallers), translating to the bottom line of the guts to do what you think rocks and go all the way.

To often these days we see great companies that churn out mediocre products because consensus had to be reached up in the management clouds. This could very much have been the reason for spinning out of Microsoft.

Being bold will not however buy you success, just like a party, the success of a social network is not all about the surroundings…but rather “Who’s in da’house” - The setting is great…lets see who they invite.

kudos to Karl, Sean and the rest of the team, this is a rocking start - good luck!