Goowy for the un-initated out there is what started out as an online flash email system. What it has envolved into is something quite different and I think has become a real success story of what flash can achieve in a larger software product development cycle.

I have watched Goowy evolve from the early days going through the clunkyness of sorting UI, functionality and feature set. It started out simple and sweet. Then it seemed to reach the end of its original framework capabilities and start to feel a little clunky. Next the revised everything and relaunched a whole subset of new features and I guess framework which really lifted the whole site.

Tonight I logged on and tried out the file sharing and instant messaging features. WOW. The instant messaging is nothing new (think meebo etc) but the implimentation feels really nice and seemless and unobtrusive.

I then jumped on and tried out the file system. Goowy has teamed up with Box.net to provide free (and for the mega users cheap) online file storage. Nothing new again but its just how it has been done. Then the features wrapped around this new functionality just feel seemless. So i think this next version of Goowy has passed the "thats cool and ill use it cause it is" stage and has now reached the "yep that actually is nice to use and DOES make my life easier when online" stage. The usage stats are possibly showing this too, lets just hope that Goowy has the right business model to really make it and help forge the way for super slick fully blow online flash applications (wow that could be a web 2.0 term…..ssfbofa hehehe). It has been noted in a few places that Goowy has been agreesivlly marketing themselves and a few comments have been made around the place, but I have not felt abused in anyway yet. Noted the instant messaging does add a “(Sent using goowy web messenger. Check it out at http://www.goowy.com )” to the start of each conversation which is a bit unfortunate, but hey a guys gotta get paid right?

So a big well done to the team at Goowy. TechCrunch has posted an article about the new features which might be of more interest, and they have some pretty pictures. Once I get the ok from the goowy peeps I will venture to update this post with some of my own. 

Heck why fill up my own server with images when Ryan at Digital backcountry has them.