It isn’t often that we hear about a startup looking to build things that are “massively small”. But today a new startup called Particle is coming out of stealth with that mantra, along with a handful of bite-sized new products that seem to fit the bill nicely. The company is also bringing with it an interesting source of funding, with musician Justin Timberlake as its lead investor (Timberlake isn’t new to Silicon Valley – his past investments include Tapulous).

The first service to launch today is called Robo.to, which is meant to serve as a ‘digital calling card’. In some senses the service is like a mix between Google Profiles and Ping.fm, offering a single hub for all of your online presences and social activity, from which you can broadcast your status updates to multiple services. Visitors to your profile can quickly see how many Twitter followers you have, your latest Flickr photos, your current location (assuming you’ve plotted it), and links to your other online presences.

The site also prominently features a spot for a ‘video avatar’ – a brief video clip that’s meant to take the place of traditional emoticons or static photos, which you can broadcast to a number of popular online services. It’s a neat concept, reminiscent of the moving photographs from Harry Potter (for an example see the video below, or Timberlake’s profile here). And while it may not catch on with everyone, I suspect it could prove popular with younger crowds. The site is also very mobile friendly (note the narrow width), and plays nice with the iPhone out the gate.

source: techcrunch.com