Twext.me – Twitter Mentions To SMS Text
Today we launched Twext.me to an extremely limited group of testers.
Ben Martin, the Zen Master of Association Social Networking, approached me a few weeks ago about a need he was filling with a mashup of several different online services. The need was simple. Ben wanted to be notified via SMS Text message anytime there was a mention of @bkmcae on Twitter. Since this is a seemingly logical function not supported on Twitter, I was surprised something like this didn’t exist in the wild. After some research, we determined there was really only one service similar, Tweettrak. The difference, Tweettrack sends your notice via direct message to your twitter account.
As a heavy user of Twitter, I know having mentions sent to me via direct message is not an optimal solution. I want my private direct messages to be distinct from my mentions. So, on Wednesday, April 15 we began to build Twext.me and two days later we have it up for testing.
I’ve had it running since this afternoon and I can already tell some major changes are going to be required to make this a service that heaver twitter users might find valueable. My phone was bombarded by text messages today. I did a quick look and in the last 24 hours, Ben has had 42 mentions on Twitter. In that same time period, I ( @respres ) have 90 mentions. I haven’t talked to Ben yet, but each mention coming in as an individual SMS Text was a bit overwhelming for me. So, right off the bat, we have a few changes to make.
Here are two things we’ll need to do pretty quick:
- A pause button. Twext.me needs a pause button or a way to schedule when you want the updates to occur. For example, I don’t want to get updates while I’m at my computer and able to engage directly with Twitter.
- A digest option. If 6 people retweet the same information, I don’t need six differnt text messages. Even if the information is different, I’m really only looking for an alert that indicates that I should go take a look.
I know the service will be a lot more valuable to me when those two items are incorporated into the site. Stay tuned. More to come.
[...] help me out, Jeff built this site for me, and now it’s out of super-secret beta so I can share it with you. Watch this video for [...]
[...] a txt message update using a tool that we built at Zeek for Ben Martin called Twext.me. Twext.me sends a summary of the “mentions” I receive on Twitter and alerts me to the possibility that I might want to go pay attention. Ben expressed his need for [...]
Signed up for your service…love it. Exactly what I’ve been looking for. Can’t thank you enough. Excellent job to all.
[...] beginning, you know that we’ve been using the various mobile carrier email-to-text options to deliver your Twitter mentions vis SMS. This worked fine, but most of the carriers generated a unique short code for each notification we [...]
Twitter is very addictive. I like Twitter more than blogging. the messages are short and straight to the point.
[...] might look like when we solved a problem for Ben Martin and created Twext.me. Ben saw a need, communicated that need and we created Twext.me to meet that need. It was a taste of what could be and we liked [...]
i really love to use Twitter. i was addicted to Blogging before the birth of Twitter. Now i am addicted to Twitter.
i just love Twittering compared to blogging. i was a blog addict and now i am a Twitter addict.
when will this be available to people like me?
Twitter has become so much fun to use, now that there are so many new tools to play with.
Jontegrant, it’s available now.
how can I use this service?
[...] we first launched Twext.me, Twitter was in the early stages of their OAUTH launch. There were a few hitches when we made our [...]