No not that kind of mugshot but a Web kind.

Created by the Linux distributor Red Hat, MugShot.org this is a new venture in the ever popular social bookmarking sites that are being added to the Internet everyday. Pretty soon there’ll be a sharing site to share all these sharing sites.

Mugshot currently offers two activities:

Link Swarm - Share web links with individuals or groups in real time, and get live feedback when people visit those links

Music Radar - Show off the music you listen to using services like iTunes, Yahoo! Music, and others on your web site, blog or MySpace page

Currently it works with mainstream applications like iTunes, Yahoo! Music Engine, Firefox and Internet Explorer and currently supports Windows XP and Linux platforms, with limited support for Apple’s OS X.

The things that set it apart from the rest of the crowd are that the site adds new live social experiences to existing applications and provides a platform for building new ones. Contributing to a leveling of the playing field between commercial and non-commercial content and service providers. Also they aim to get into the minds of the mainstream users, not just techies or IT departments. The best part they say is that it is 100% open source, including the server and clients.

Beta Stages

Still in the baby aka beta stage you can find the source code for the client and server, project information, blog, and more, at http://developer.mugshot.org. And of course try out the service at the site as of today.

What to expect?

They are currently in the research and design phase for a set of features that center around creating a live social experience around TV and video. For now the functionality of the site is intended to work with “social networking” sites, not replace them, and to add new live social experiences to them. For example, Mugshot currently allows users to publish their iTunes song history to their MySpace profile.

They do not want to be a replacement for existing online music services. Instead they want to be able to have users integrate their profiles with other blogs or social network profile pages, eg; iTunes users can share play lists with users of other services, such as blogs or social network profile pages.

The Mugshot client software currently offers integration with Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Engine, Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows XP. The open source Rhythmbox music player and Firefox are supported on Linux.

The site currently makes use of public web services from Yahoo! and Amazon, but has no formal partnership with either company related to this project.

What do I say?

Well, let’s see social bookmarking seems to be the rage now, and every big VC is willing to throw some money behind one. Since this projects seems to be open source I think it will make a more broader appeal as functions and usability will be much different than the other ones out there like myspace, furl and such.

If they are able to play their cards, or code, right then I believe that with time they make an impressive impact upon the social bookmarking world and not only draw in the fans but new and repeat users, which is what really matters for any business in the long run.

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.