Fichey Provides Simple Web Browsing. Literally!

Fichey is about as simple as browsing the internet can get. This new service that launched today provides a basic flash site that works very similar to StumbleUpon by allowing users to browse popular current websites.

One major difference though, is that this service is not in traditional web 2.0 style which involves collaboration. Instead, the sole purpose of this service is to re-hash content that has recently been popular on the social bookmarking services Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

How does Fichey do that? Simple. It takes a snapshot of each page and serves it to viewers in a simple, well-designed Flash viewer. The service even takes out the hyperlinks, so all you can do is read. The interface is so simple, that you really only use two buttons. Those would be the Previous and Forward arrows which allow you to switch between articles. You can view any article in the database, which is organized by date and begins with July 5, 2007. Apparently that is the day that Fichey got underway archiving the social sites.

If you want to visit an article, it's as easy as a double-click on the story. While you are off-site, Fichey inserts a hover frame that can help get you back to Fichey or provide you with the story's URL to share with others.

The service stays one step ahead by caching additional stories while you read, so that you can quickly scroll through the new ones once you finish an article. According to Arrington at TechCrunch, "Don’t be too hard on it if it’s slow right now, I’m not sure they want a lot of attention on it yet."

For now, I cannot see this service actually being of too much use to anyone in particular. There is really no incentive for users to go back and continue visiting the site. Perhaps the minds behind Fichey have a few more tricks up their sleeve to make this service more interesting and worthwhile. I certainly hope so, because right now, the only thing this service has got going for it is good looks, which seem to have taken a cue from Apple's iTunes "Cover Flow" and Front Row interfaces.

Try Fichey out and let me know if you think it has potential in the world of web 2.0, which usually requires interactivity.