Nurphy, what are you?

The guys from Nurphy have created a conversation platform that’s attempting to take another stab at email.

If you’re familiar with how Google is attempting to create a conversation platform through Google Wave, this is far from it. In fact, it’s quite challenging to try to define Nurphy without being somewhat negative: It’s like Twitter without the character limitations with a lot less social networking features.

Let’s take a look.

You can register to Nurphy using either your standard credentials or using your Twitter account. Then you’re ready to start messaging by adding contacts (an email address would do) and composing your message – or conversation.

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In addition to private conversations, you can compose a completely public conversation where any other user can participate or host an exclusive conversation which others can read but cannot reply to.

Recipients will be automatically given a username and can reply by either registering online or replying in a specific location within the email body. Your BlackBerry won’t like it.

You can reply via email by including your message between these two lines:

[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]
[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]

Don’t bother attaching anything to your email. Although Nurphy will recognize that you’ve sent an attachment, there doesn’t seem to be a way for the recipients to access that attachment. There goes your show-and-tell!

Also, it seems impossible to find other public or exclusive conversations on the website and the interesting section called recommended conversations was empty.

The potential use of Nurphy could be for hosted conversations for bands and celebrities to discuss and respond, but it doesn’t seem to offer much more than what a public chat server would apart from a permanent log.

Although there is no character limitation, you feel restricted to type anything more than what you would on Twitter because of the small input space you’re provided with.

While security should be of critical essence in any messaging (fine, conversations) platform, this app doesn’t do it quite well. The ‘remember me for 2 weeks’ button lives up to its promise. Even after logging out, clicking on login will actually log you back in with not even a choice to switch users. Attempting to register again, I was logged in and slapped with a warning. Ouch!

Creators Paul Horsfall and Neil Cauldwell have mentioned that “Social networking or microblogging services were never quite [their] thing” but seem to have created a service that allows people to publicly follow notifications from others and even participate – albeit impossible to find.

So we ask the question again. Nurphy, what are you?