Consumer Corner : twitter, microblogging

Yammer Launches API and Developer Platform

Mike Phillips — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Yammer, the Techcrunch50 "Best in Show" winner has announced the release of their API. The "Twitter for Enterprises," Yammer will likely see a big uptake in use thanks to the integration of tools the API will foster. Already, Seesmic has announced they will use the API to add twhirl support for Yammer. thwhirl is a desktop client that allows cross-posting to other microblogging sites and the ability to search for tweets, among other capabilities.

Yammer works just like Twitter, except that it's meant for internal corporate communications. You sign up with your company email, then can follow your colleagues. Yammer makes money by charging a fee for businesses to "claim" their users - gaining administrative control over them.

It's sure to be a desirable tool for businesses. In the first day alone, 10,000 individuals and 2,000 orgainizations signed up for Yammer. If you thought having a Blackberry linked to your work email was overbearing, wait until you're getting "Yammered" all hours of the day and night. And in addition to the Blackberry, Yammer has applications for the iPhone and a desktop client.

Dwigger: Digg for Twitter

Mike Phillips — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:16:00 GMT

Dwigger is a new service that lets you not only post "Tweets" on Twitter and Dwigger, but lets other users reply to your messages in a threaded conversation stream format and vote on content, ala Digg. As long as you have a Twitter account, you're ready to use Dwigger. You can post messages directly through Dwigger, or paste the URL of an interesting Tweet you've found and post that - you can find hot Twitter posts through Dwigger's "Hit List." Of course, those Tweets that are voted on the most get put into "top voted" categories on Dwigger. Any comments (replies) to Dwigger messages will be posted on Twitter as a new Tweet.

There are some other interesting features, such as the ability to expand on the 140 character limit within Dwigger, including images or video (will be shown as a link in the corresponding Tweet) and the ability to submit content to Dwigger as an SMS message through your Twitter account by starting your message with "d dwigger."

It's a new service so there will certainly be some growing pains, but the ability to vote and keep organized conversation streams is an attractive prospect for the microblogging community.