Twitter as an input for your service

jerome — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:34:36 +0000

Dopplr recently launched a new version called “Copenhagen” and amongst the new features there is this possibility to insert new trip to Dopplr directly via Twitter (and also by SMS or email). All you need to do is reply to Dopplr with the trip information (eg. “A trip to Helsinki on May 19 to May 23″). Mixin is also using Twitter to feed your social agenda. Problem is that every service requires to fit a given format (for Twitter: “mention a placename and two dates, including the month both times”) that 1) you have to remember, 2) is most likely not compatible with other service. Next step would be to feed those services with natural language…

Also it is interesting to see that Twitter is becoming the “de facto” status aggregator as it is used to feed other services (it is a bit surprising as well given the lack of reliability of this tool that keeps on crashing).

iFeedYou is dead

jerome — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:31:07 +0000

I have been quite busy lately and I forgot to announce that one… iFeedYou is dead! It was a difficult move but a realistic one… I can not spend hours on that project anymore and it has become too difficult and too expensive to maintain the service up. I feel bad for the very few people that were still using it but they can if they want contact me offline and I will set up for them an alternative online aggregator (while Google Reader or Bloglines might actually do the job :-).

The idea of a mobile RSS feed aggregator might not have been the most revolutionary idea (though I am strongly convinced that I was a very early mover in that field, and there were features I have not seen anywhere else yet) but it was the best idea I have never had in my professional live (so far… I am hopping the best is in front of me!). I never succeeded to bring that project to the next level, I have never lived from direct revenue of that project but it has brought lot of traction and as such indirect revenue. It is just amazing the number of contacts I have made thanks to this project…

Stef and Selina from BlogAgency in Paris to start with… we have met the first time because they liked iFeedYou’s logo (thanks Jérémy for that one). We started some other projects together which are still running…
For my last two jobs (including the current one) people contacted me because they have found out about iFeedYou;
My local “competitors” – rss4you – runs by Roberto and Nicolas (both Liftlab member now);
Actors of the swiss and french blogosphere (whatever that is…)
… and so on

It is sad to come to an end but I will never regret the decision to have started this… if you have a project you believe in… “go ahead”, give it a chance, you might not get the result you were looking for but there is no doubt you will benefit from the experience!

Smoothplanet » aggregator

Twitter as an input for your service

iFeedYou is dead