Twalala: Twitter with a Mute Button
Man, sounds like I missed out on a blast at Rails Rumble 2008. What’s Rails Rumble?
Spend the weekend of October 18th and 19th with us, designing, developing, and deploying the micro application you’ve been dreaming about.
So, eat burritos and code for an entire weekend. One of these days, I’ll be able to pull something like that off.
This year, Providence Geeks rock stars Matt Gillooly (@mattgillooly), Alex Taylor (@goldenmeanie), TJ Sondermann (@sondernagle) and Steve Babigian (@k00k) formed a team. And they came up with something awesome.
Twalala is a web-based Twitter client (I just happen to be running it as a site-specific browser using Fluid.app in the screenshot above). Why does the world need another Twitter client? Because this one solves a problem that nobody else does.
Twalala is “Twitter with a mute button”. Why would you want to mute something in Twitter? Here are a few examples I can come up with:
- You don’t want to hear anything about a specific movie/tv show until you’ve seen it. You can add “Iron Man” or “LOST” to your mute phrases and nothing containing those words will show up in your stream.
- You’re like me and hate automated messages that come from other services. Find the text that is always in those (like “Welcome new followers:”) and cut them from your stream.
- Maybe you feel obligated to follow that reeeeeeally annoying person that’s new to Twitter. Well, you can, then mute them, and they’ll be none the wiser. Until they ask you what you thought of that tweet…
Here’s where you set your muting preferences:
“No Thanks” includes phrases you want cut from your stream. “I Didn’t Mean You!” is a whitelist. You can add phrases or usernames that will be allowed through, even if other parts of the message are muted per the filters above it. Finally, “Take a Timeout” mutes everything by a specific user.
When something is white-listed through the “I Didn’t Mean You!” portion, it is highlighted in your stream (see my “twalala” tweet from the first screenshot). Very cool for your ego, when you can easily see if someone mentions you or your company.
After just two days of development, Twalala is surprisingly robust. Every time I accessed it over the weekend, something was new, tweaked, or fixed. Of course, there are still a few things missing to make me completely ditch Hahlo, but I’m sure they’re coming. Those things are:
- A replies view
- The ability to view DMs sent and received
- A favorite button next to each Tweet
- Hyperlinked hashtags (even if it just sent me off to the search.twitter interface, though integrated would be cool)
I love where this is headed, though. It even looks great on iPhone after a double-tap (one of my requirements for a Twitter client is consistent user experience on iPhone and in-browser).
Great job, guys!
Please, give Twalala a try.
I checked out Twalala because of your blog post and the energetic tweeting over the weekend from the Providence folks - very intuitive user interface and useful concept-turned-app. Thanks Adam for the write-up and thanks to the developers!
Definitely a cool concept.
I wish there was something like this for Facebook (no Aunt Minnie, I don’t want you to be my friend OR follow your doggie’s vet experiences!).
My 2 cents: Make the individual mute filters shareable–as searchable add-ons (by keyword) for users who want to mute the same kinds of things as you do (except maybe Aunt Minnie).
Thanks a ton for the writeup, Adam! Although the site is temporarily frozen for Rails Rumble judging, we’ve all agreed that we want to continue pushing this project forward. So rest assured that work is continuing… I hear Steve already has a bunch of updates he’s anxious to push, as soon as we set up a non-Rails-Rumble server. We’re planning to reach feature parity with the other Twitter clients out there, and also add some more of the things the other guys are all missing. I know I’m looking forward to it!
Thanks, Matt! It’s been my Twitter client pretty much all weekend and all day. Loving it!
If you guys won, I could hand deliver the Rails Forum-sponsored part of the grand prize (I’m in Providence).
Cool app. I’m having a lot of fun digging through all the stuff people made this year. Good luck — the competition is stiff!
(Edit: I suppose I should have said “if the Twalala guys win” …)
Hi Josh! Oh, we know you’re in Providence.
Just haven’t happened to meet you yet.
I like to think of myself as a pre-alpha tester for the team, so the first comment kind of holds up.
Josh, that sounds good. Fuel efficiency- one more reason for people to vote for twalala! =)
BTW, the first meeting of the new RI Ruby Users Group is next Monday (details @ http://rirug.wordpress.com/). Maybe we’ll see you there?
@Adam: We should definitely make it a point to rectify that. Jack (Templin) has been on me to show up at one of the Providence Geeks dinners, but I keep wussing out.
By the way, think you could shoot me an email connecting me to some of the Twalala team members? I’m planning a general blog post about the Rumble for SitePoint.com (my day job) and I’d love to get some quotes one what makes people think giving up a weekend to code non-stop for 48 hours is a good idea.
( josh [at] railsforum [dot] com or josh.catone@sitepoint.com )
Awesome, Josh. I’ve emailed the team. Those Geeks meetings rock! Hope to run into you at one!
[...] October, I wrote about Twalala, a new Twitter client. Twalala bills itself as “Twitter with a mute [...]