Intriguing, innovative, and unexpected. Miracle Whip. It sounds like a commercial for the white sandwich spread, but those are the first words that came into this journalist’s mind while playing with Kraft Foods Miracle Whip branded social networking application, Zingr. Trust me, I’m as surprised as you.

 

Think of Zingr, which is still in beta, as one part commentary, one part link-sharing. The Firefox-only add-on, which can be used both with Facebook and Twitter, allows a person to write up little notes of up to 160 characters on any aspect of any web page.

According to an article on AdWeek, the application targets 18-34 year olds and was created by AKQA and Digitas.

The application, which was released mid-May, is pretty simple and should be accessible to even those friends and relatives who are luddites. To install the add-on, go to the application installation page, download the app, type the login info for Facebook and/or Twitter, then restart Firefox. Once the browser reboots, the user will notice a new icon to the left of the URL bar, the Zing. Just click on the icon and it will bring up a blue-and white speech bubble (the Zing) that users can type into and drag anywhere on the web page.

Once a Zing has been posted, the application will send notifications to both Twitter and Facebook. Friends and followers can open the link  to see the Zing, which at first appears as a little icon blue-and-white “Zing” icon, but opens up when clicked. The speech bubble also shows the poster’s Facebook icon, and the date and time the Zing was posted. One note: only those who have Zingr installed can view Zings.

The app isn’t perfect. Unfortunately, updates on Facebook can only be viewed on a person’s profile page and not their stream, a hindrance for what would otherwise be a viral application. This could slow down the application’s adoption on Facebook because friends won’t see Zingr updates on Facebook unless they view the Zingr user’s profile page. Also, at first, the application preferences are tough to find, despite the Zing homepage which points them out. Intuitively, they should be part of the icon by the URL bar and accessible with a right-click, but instead are shoved to the bottom, right-hand corner of the page. As previously mentioned, the application is in beta so any of this could change with the final release. Finally, Zing’s can only be viewed by someone using Firefox with the application installed.

If Zingr sounds like the social networking app for you, head to http://www.facebook.com/miraclewhip and try it out.