Remember the good old 1.0 days when all you needed to establish an online presence was a homepage? (back when it was still called a homepage anyway =)

Nowadays, thanks to Web 2.0, you share your thoughts on your blog(s), send your friends your latest YouTube videos, your most recent del.icio.us bookmarks and get them to digg your favourite articles. You keep them updated on your activities with Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr, share all your photos on flickr and keep in touch on Facebook. And of course everyone keeps the hype going by bouncing around the internet just trying to keep up with the daily avalanche of “check this out!”

Enter HypeSphere. A up-and-coming startup from right here in Stockholm. HypeSphere aims to answer that very basic need from which everything above stems: self promotion. Everyone wants to be noticed.

I had the opportunity to meet up with Rizal Karim, co-founder of HypeSphere to find out more about the upcoming service.

Your YouTube videos, your blog posts, your bookmarks — these are your Personal Internet Assets (PIAs), according to Rizal. These assets define who you are online, define your personality and ultimately, define the quality of your person (just imagine a friend who keeps sending you useless YouTube videos. You know what I mean =).

With HypeSphere, you’ll get a profile page upon sign up on which you can post an assortment of your PIAs. You’ll also have to choose your areas of interest, or your Spheres.

Now here comes the Hype bit. HypeSphere users will be able to cast votes on other members’ profiles, either by voting for (Hyping), or against (Wiping) them. What this means, is that your HypeRank on the site depends on what other users think of you and your content. Over time, through general consensus, it then becomes easy to identify the user with the greatest relevance in a particular Sphere simply by looking at his HypeRank. The greater his HypeRank, the greater the Hype, the greater the relevance.

It’s a win-win-win situation. The most Hype-d users will naturally draw more attention to their sites and feeds, users seeking out views and opinions in the Spheres will be able to zoom in the most relevant content. And let’s not forget about what started this whole thing in the first place: self promotion — everyone will be able to promote themselves to everybody else more efficiently than ever before.

HypeSphere seems to be bringing something new to the table this time around. We’ve had (mobile) social networks and aggregators, but with HypeSphere, you’ll be able to see at a glance who’s bringing the meat and who’s just cluttering the table with junk.

So if you’d like to be part of the Hype, sign up for their Alpha which should be launched any time soon.

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HypeSphere has been under development for about 8 months and has been entirely self funded by its 2 founders. HypeSphere recently got nominated in the The Next Web Awards in the Beta & Stealth category, where they compete against the likes of Joost, Polar Rose and Wakoopa. Do cast them a vote if you like their idea!