My old classmate John Kembel is a really smart guy. He and twin brother George (who now runs the D-School at Stanford) were great designers, combining passion, artistry, and hardcore engineering smarts.

Since I knew I couldn’t compete with that kind of talent, I turned my attention to the easier path of being a marketing weasel and entrepreneur.

Since then, we’ve all gotten a lot older and fatter, but John is still a brilliant guy. His latest venture is HiveLive, a new kind of social network that pulls together many of the best features out there (networking, posting, sharing) and incorporates them into a single whole.

To get a better idea of how it works, take a look at John’s public “hive”:
http://www.hivelive.com/people/john/hives/public/posts

HiveLive is really moving in the direction of one of my own predictions, which is that in the future, all of us will have a universal feed that our friends and family can consume. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one!

To sign up, follow this link:
http://hivelive.com/join/beta2-yeh

It should be good for 50 signups, and if it runs out, just let me know, and I’ll get John to give us more.