In addition to Twitter alternatives, the Twitter-based apps and plugins keep coming. Stan Schroeder at Mashable lists 8 Twitter-related plugins for the Firefox browser. Didn’t think Twitter had enough functionality for all these? Many Twitter-based third party apps are either “watchers”, “extenders”, or “posters”. In this list of eight there are some variations I haven’t come across previously.
One is TwittyTunes, which is put out by the same folks who offer the very cool FoxyTunes Firefox extension. With TwittyTunes, anytime you listen to a song or watch a video on iTunes, it’ll post that info to your Twitter stream. Personally, I think that’s a bit much. It’s one thing to use an app like Last.fm or iLike (and the iLike sidebar), which show your recent listens in a couple of ways, and still another to commit your tastes into a stream of tweets. Some people will no doubt consider this as a type of Twitter pollution. Others will like it. It depends on how you Twitter, and what you expect to see in the tweet streams of those Twitterers you follow.
On the other hand, Twitbin and Tweetbar simply take Twitter functionality and encapsulate it into the sidebar of Firefox. Download Squad describes Twitbin in more detail.
Want Twitter on the go? Check out their new mobile interface. Word is that a number of existing web services sites have started implementing functionality similar to Twitter. No doubt mobile Twitter clones are next.
Originally posted on May 7, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
Could TwittyTunes exist because tumblr offers the possibility to import your last.fm feed? And after two days I wished I had never spammed my tumblr page with it! Now I can delete everything.
Franky, I found I couldn’t delete flickr photo items from my Tumblr log. There were a few risque items generated via my Yahoo Pipes/Twitter mashup.
I am still stuck how to use, what to do with tumblr. I thought the concept of a lifestream, importing all my feeds was cool, but it would just be spam. Or at least not invite the twitter-alike communication.
I think I might stick to WP and a scrape plugin to get the complete lifestream.
I am looking forward to the new features tumblr will release though, especially their new comment feature.
I must admit I still haven’t played with Yahoo Pipes. Somehow everything with Yahoo in the name makes me redundant.
Raj – thanks for covering TwittyTunes! A small correction, though – it’s important to emphasize that TwittyTunes does *not* auto-submit anything – in order to submit, you click a little button on your status bar, review what’s being submitted, optionally add your comment and the hit ‘post’, so there is no danger of ‘spamming’ your Twitter stream with endless twits for each song played.
We see our users twit only their favorite songs, or songs that start or end their listening session, covey their mood etc. In that sense, twitting music is no different than telling your friends about any other highlight of your day…
-Alex
FoxyTunes
@Alex: Thanks for the correction. That makes a HUGE difference. In fact, it then puts TwittyTunes into my “cool Twitter apps” list, since you can control the tweets. By the way, love the FoxyTunes plugin.
@Raj – thanks! I’ve updated the TwittyTunes page (http://www.foxytunes.com/twittytunes/) and added a clarification about no auto-twitting, to prevent possible confusion :)