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High-profile startup Gravity launched its group conversation website to the public tonight. Founded by three former MySpace executives - Amit Kapur, Steve Pearman, and Jim Benedetto - and backed by Redpoint Ventures and August Capital, Gravity "connects people with shared interests and helps them engage in meaningful and fun conversations."

Unlike other social networks that rely on previous relationships, Gravity connects users with others "you should know and should be talking to because they share your passions." Rather than rely on existing social connections, Gravity encourages users to make new ones.

Mark Fletcher builds software, that's just what he does. He may have sold the system that became Yahoo Groups for $400 million, and then made millions selling Bloglines to Ask.com as well, but that doesn't mean he's going to stop making software. And it's not just any software he makes, either. Those two projects changed millions of peoples' lives.

Tomorrow morning Fletcher will unveil his newest creation, a lightweight group communication tool called SnapGroups. We first wrote about it two weeks ago but hadn't been able to take a look until tonight. We're happy to report that you're probably going to like it a lot: it's easy, it's clear, it's got good social design and it's real time. Check out the screenshots below.

Mark Fletcher, the man who built one of the first easy email group services online and sold it to Yahoo! for $400 million, then built former market-leading RSS reader Bloglines and sold it to Ask.com, plans to launch a new service next week called SnapGroups (currently password protected).

Fletcher planned on unveiling the company tonight at Dave McClure's Palo Alto event Lean Startups but had technical problems hours before going on stage that delayed the launch of the site. None the less, he offered some details about what we can expect next week.