Branch, A New Online Discussion Service With Less Noise

Branch is an online discussion service that lets users have focused conversations with their friends, with less of the all-caps noise of typical online discussion (video). Users can start a discussion, or “branch,” with a link, tweet, or message, and invite people in their network to join the conversation. The branches are public (and can be embedded almost anywhere), but outsiders must request an invite to join the discussion. For an example, see this branch on childhood tech memories. The service is currently in public beta.

New York City-based Branch was founded by Josh Miller, Hursh Agrawal, and Cemre Güngör. It is backed in part by Obvious Corporation, an incubator founded by Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter, and Jason Goldman (formerly of Twitter).