We received a very interesting email about a new service just launching, Tweexchange. Tweexchange is a very basic and ugly website that lets users search for both domain names and twitter username’s at the same time. I thought this was a great idea but execution seems to be very limited.
The domain search is provided by Godaddy which provides very accurate results. However, Im really disappointed with the sites design. It seems like a good idea because branding is very important when purchasing a domain name and it is a lot more attractive if you can get a domain name and twitter name exactly the same. I would have liked to see the option to search for a Facebook page option in the same search and maybe a few other site. Im keen to hit all the major sites at once and not just a domain and twitter.
We’ve all heard or Bit.ly, TinyURL and the rest. All of them shorten URLs so they can be discreet and fit places (like in the restrictive Twitter posting area). But what about the opposite end of the scale. What about huge URLs? And I mean HUGE.
HugeUrl.com is a website that takes you average sized link and makes it really big. I’m still yet to come up with a good use for it other than to annoy friends and for your own individuality.
I was planning on posting a link here to the Crenk Twitter account or something but when I got the link lengthened at hugeURL.com it was over forty lines long which I though was a bit much to have on the homepage.
Another similar service which I found was http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ who offer the worlds longest e-mail addresses. Apparently they’re so long that some software and online forms won’t accept them and “people have a hard time typing in your e-mail address” – obviously.
So long story short (pun intended) – go to HugeURL.com if you want ridiculously long URLs which are useful for nothing and go to http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ for the worlds longest e-mail address.
There are so many Twitter sponsored tweets businesses popping up all over the net at the moment. The first players were Be-A-Magpie, but im still yet to see much of an adoption for this service. The newest player in the market is SponsoredTweets. SponsoredTweets is a service that does exactly what it says on the box and it is bough to you by the slight dodgy team over at Izea. Izea have launched many services that have caught the eye of the blogosphere and SponsoredTweets is no different.
SponsoredTweets allows early adopters to currently signup and via a special URL (click here for the URL), and then choose whether they want to get paid per tweet or per click. Currently the service is only picking up as many twitter users as possible and they will soon be launching the platform to advertisers.
Im really not too sure if sponsored tweets actually works, because most twitter users dont like sponsored tweets in general, but it is kind of appealing to advertisers. Only time will tell.
There are so many url shortening websites on the web these days and more and more are popping up every day. Today I was using stumbleupon when I was bored for a couple of minutes and came across a bit of a different take on url shortening. JumboURL is the complete opposite to url shortening, its a url extending service.
JumboURL claims to be the second website of its kind on the net and I’m surprised it wasn’t the first. I’m not entirely too sure what the point is of this service. Why would you be looking to extend you url? Anyways, its an interesting service and decent site to check out.
Have you ever wanted your own online chatroom where your friends can come and meet and chat? If this is the case then Tinychat is for you. Tinychat is a simple web application that allows anyone to make a chatroom very quickly.
All users need to do is head over to Tinychat and then they have an option of typing in the url of the chatroom they want to join or they can make a new chatroom. Its that simple.
If you are in a business and you are looking for feedback on your site then it seems like a simple idea to create a chatroom in which your users can give you direct feedback on what they are looking for from your service. Since this sounded like a good idea we have created a Crenk chatroom in which you can check out here.
When you have an urge (we all get it), or a task that requires you to go sifting through blogs, what is the first place that comes to mind? Technorati of course. It is an established player in a fairly open market which has seen their superiority fairly untroubled. Until now?
Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.
According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.
You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.
Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.
Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.
Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.
Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however, is the Huffington Post.
With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical, and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.
Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.
They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.
Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.
