Around about that time, I was working on a Mercurial frontend https://github.com/tanepiper/hgfront - it was around the time GitHub was starting to pick up, and BitBucket also appeared around then (we spoke to the original developer at the time but nothing came of it). Funnily enough also a Gist-like tool that had inline commenting, forking and formatting (https://github.com/tanepiper/pastemonkey).
I always wonder what would have happened if we had a dedicated team to make something of it, but in the end git won over hg anyway so likely a moot point.
Fun fact, I (original author), wrote the original version of Gist. That was my first project at GitHub. Gist #1 is my claim to fame: https://gist.github.com/schacon/1
I always wonder what would have happened if we had a dedicated team to make something of it, but in the end git won over hg anyway so likely a moot point.
Edit: there's a low-quality video of the early interface we worked on - https://youtu.be/NARcsoPp4F8