(PRWEB) February 22, 2006 -- After Smart Mobs and Flash Mobs comes the next generation of social networks. Birds of a feather meet on content of common interest. Without knowing each other in advance, they can meet by chance. Web Mobs do not have to leave their home. They do not give up their anonymity. Web Mobs meet on Web pages.

The social network Friendster came to be known 3 years ago. Many other social networks like LinkedIn and MySpace followed. These networks display the mesh of contacts and indirect relations of users. They reproduce relationships of real world networks. The relationships existed before online social networks emerged.

But how do people get new contacts? Social networks believe, that new contacts grow on old relations, because a new contact is the friend of a friend.

Dr. Heiner Wolf has a different approach. He believes, that people meet and socialize because of common interests. He developed a virtual presence system, a new generation of social software. People meet each other on Web pages, because they are in the same virtual place at the same time. They become Web Mobs. Users do not have to enter an extensive profile. They do not have to make appointments. People can meet by chance on any page of the Web. They are not limited to a community page. The software is universally applicable. It works everywhere on the Web.

On the Web as well as in real life, new relations develop if people are in the same place at the same time and if they have a common interest. "In real life we are used to meet people. We meet in shops, cafes, in the lecture hall, and in the doctor's waiting room. Common interest is a very natural way to make new contacts. That's the same on the Internet. Visiting the same Web site is a strong indication, that the other person has related interests. Its the content.", explains Wolf.

Based on this idea Dr. Wolf developed the virtual presence system. The chief scientist of the software developer bluehands offers this new kind of social software for free. He wants to bring the Web alive with people. The system has been developed based on the Jabber protocol (XMPP) and is distributed under GPL.

More about Virtual Presence: virtual-presence.org

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