Jason Shellen, founder of Thing Labs, the startup formerly known as Plinky, is keeping details about its new social media product tightly under wraps — except to say that initially it will only work in conjunction with Twitter. While other application developers focus their attention on multiple social network sites, Thing Labs decided to develop its latest application for the API friends and fellow ex-Googlers Biz Stone and Evan Williams created.

Thing Labs is primarily familiar with the Twitter API via the friendships of Shellen and VP of Technology Chris Wetherell with Stone and Williams, so it seemed natural to start building its new application on that platform first. Wetherell, a former senior software engineer at Google, even spent a few months working on projects at Twitter after he left the search giant earlier this year.

“Chris and I have been using Twitter for about three years now — we were in the first group of users.” Shellen said. “We’re big fans and believers in Twitter as a platform and it’s a great place to invest our time.”

The upcoming release of this new social media product — which is expected to launch in a few weeks — was also the impetus behind Thing Labs’ name change. Shellen’s startup was originally named after its first social media product, Plinky. Launched six months ago, Plinky is a web application that prompts users to answer a question — topics run the gamut from movies to travel — and lets them to post their answers on Facebook, Twitter or blogs.

Shellen said the Thing Labs’ social media application will roll out in a few weeks. In addition to Wetherell, who joined the company a few months weeks ago, Dolapo Falola is leaving a senior engineering position with Google and will join the startup in July, making Thing Labs a popular destination for the growing network of ex-Googlers.

Just about a year ago Jason Shellen and I started Plinky. A lot happens in a year. Jason and team built a very cool product that eliminated much of the pain associated with staring at the blank text box of your blog editor wondering “What am I going to write about?” Plinky is doing well but the mission of the company has expanded into helping people participate more easily in the conversation Web, which is, well, the fabric of conversations on the social Web. So, yes, it means we are doing something that now also puts Twitter in the picture.

The new name is Thing Labs. What else is new? New address in San Francisco and the addition of Chris Wetherell (co-founder of Google Reader with Jason) and the tech he’s been quietly building. Lots going on. Follow the company on Twitter to stay in the loop.

Om Malik broke the news today about Plinky. Plinky is the brainchild of founder/CEO Jason Shellen, a former Googler who worked on Blogger and shipped Google Reader. Jason and I partnered up last fall and just raised our seed round from my partners at Polaris Venture Partners. I’m co-founder and interim CTO. We have a small, sharp team of Web developers who are busy building cool things. We can’t tell you more at this point–you know how it goes–but you can sign up at Plinky.com to keep in touch. Thanks go to the dozens of people who provided great feedback along the way. We listened. You’ll like what you’ll see. 

In my six years at Polaris, Plinky is the fourth company that I have helped launch and the second company I have co-founded. Last fall I decided to switch my focus fully to helping entrepreneurs launch companies. Many of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to are looking for help. There are not that many people in the venture business who both know how to do this and have the bandwidth to do it well. Think of me as a serial co-founder who helps shape the idea, raise capital, build the team and execute. I have founding equity in the companies, which aligns my interests with the entrepreneurs’. In order to have time to partner and engage deeply with my co-founders, I have stopped doing traditional investments and taking board seats, although I remain a partner at Polaris and 100% dedicated to building companies that Polaris invests in. My partner VCMike did the Plinky investment and will be on the board.

On Friday I caught up with Jason Shellen, one of the members of the original Blogger team. Following Google’s February 2003 acquisition of PyraLabs, the company behind Blogger, Shellen joined the search engine giant, working first on Blogger and later on other projects, including Google Reader.

In July 2007, he became a member of the ex-Googler club, joining Six Apart spinoff LiveJournal for a brief stint as VP of product development. He has since left that gig and is now focused on a new startup, Plinky, which doesn’t have a web site just yet. (Now there’s a Web 2.0 name if there ever was one!)

Shellen has co-founded Plinky with CTO Simeon Simeonov, formerly chief architect of both Macromedia and Allaire, but now a partner with Polaris Ventures in Boston. Polaris has invested $1.5 million in the company; a handful of angel investors are looking to join this investment round as well, Shellen said. The company currently has four employees, though it plans to hire a whole slew of engineers as soon as it finds permanent digs in Berkeley.

“I think a lot of attention is being paid to the aggregation and new kinds of social media tools but not enough attention (has been paid) to creation (of the social media),” he said. “When blogging was getting going, there were lot of interesting ideas, and now the technology has progressed enough that we can try out those ideas.” So what’s the plan? Shellen wouldn’t offer any details other than to say that he’s working on “content encouragement.” In other words, they’re building something aimed at getting people who aren’t bloggers or content creators to participate and create.

How? I don’t really know, and he wouldn’t say. One thing I do know: Shellen is a smart guy and having known him for a long time, I trust that he has something interesting up his sleeve. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out when the company launches its first offering this fall.