Twollo - Follow Twitter Users With Your Interests

Dec 14, 2008

I don’t think it’s humanly possible to keep up with all of the Twitter applications available? From Twitturly to TwitterFon over to Monitter, how can anyone keep up? Is there a wiki page that is updated with all of these?

I started looking at a Twitter service called Twillo that tells you who on Twitter has the same interests as you and using their interface you can add a list of topics that you are interested in. Twillo will then do all the hard work and auto subscribe you to all the people talking about the subjects you are interested in.

Every hour or so they will scan twitter to find any new people that you can join in the conversation with.

Now I placed the above in bold because I wasn’t paying attention and typed in a topic and within a few minutes I got a bunch of new followers. Not a bad thing but just want to make it clear.

I love trying out these Twitter apps. With such a great tool like Twitter and an open API, peoples imaginations have really gone wild with ways to use the Twitter service. But I wonder when the day will come that some unruley hacker decides to do all of us in with a killer app. I don’t like that most of these Twitter applications do not encrypt my information. Should we openly type in our Twitter username and password and believe that the application we want to try out is safe? I don’t know. What do you think?

-Cover image by chetan

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Paul kinlan Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 3:37 am

Hi,

Thanks for using the service and blogging about.

There is an element of trust required to use services like twollo. You have to trust that I won’t do anything with your data. You have to trust that no one will be able to hack my system and that might be too much for people, especially if your twitter account is your primary form of online identity.

We are at the point where twitter application innovation needs a trust establishment mechanism where you are in control of your profile and the applications that can access it.. Oauth may help solve that but I am not sure.

How would you suggest that I can establish trust between twollo and twitter users?

Kind regards.
Paul Kinlan
Twollo

Paul Kinlan Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

Just an announcement, if you follow @twollo you will be registered for a readonly “suggestion only” account. A DM should also work.

If you log in via the front page you will be in auto-follow mode.

Cheers,
Paul Kinlan
Twollo.

Brad Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

I just signed up for Twollo. I am impressed. Good app!

WripsDorerrom Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

The good resource should be brought in bookmarks

Scott Mahler Says:
December 20th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

I’m not comfortable with giving my twitter username, and especially password, to any site that isn’t affiliated with them. In fact, before the twitter sensation and all the apps that have popped up from it, I never heard of this type of practice. That’s probably because it has been beaten into our heads how unsecure this can be. While these apps may be useful, I’m sticking with my gut on this one.

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