Have you ever wished that you could call in status updates to Facebook? How about getting an SMS notification when something you have been looking for posts to Craigslist? Want to post a Tweet every time that someone uploads a picture to a specific gallery on Flickr? You can do that as well. You can even daisy-chain tasks together to create a slew of actions from a single trigger.
All of these things, and more, can happen via an interesting site called ifttt.com — if this, then that. The site is set up to allow you to create different triggers that correspond to actions. For instance, let’s say that you’re bookmarking things via Delicious:
What’s most compelling about ifttt is the power that it holds. What’s most impressive, though is how easy it really is to use. I have a couple of tasks set up already and following the process is amazingly simple. You litterally click “this” in a statement of “if this happens”, then you click “that” in another statement. You can customize the variables to many of them, but what you’re left with is a hugely powerful system of automation.
I’d love to say that I’ve really dug into the service, but I’m afraid that I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do. However, here’s a quick video that will walk you through and show you how everything’s set up. Simplicity at its finest, really:
For now, the service is in a private beta. But not to leave you hanging, the ifttt team has been nice enough to provide me with 50 invitations that I can hand out at will. So, leave us a comment. Tell us what you’d like to do with ifttt. We’ll pick the best ones and toss an invitation your way. Oh, and you’ll likely get bonus points if you tweet this.
Just sayin’.
Oh, and a word of forewarning: If you’re outside of the US, the SMS functions won’t work just yet. The team is trying to get that sorted, but just be aware.
I’d like to play with it to update my tumblr/wordpress/twitter/flickr loop more efficiently. :)
darn, I was just about to go to GoDaddy and register ifttt.com – guess I’ll have to settle for ifttt.me
TNW – I’d love to be invited to this private Beta (even retweeted message and all!) My reason is because it would make showing pictures to my new born across all platforms that much easier, also really trying to dive into the social media world and exploring different platforms, very interested in social media marketing and have some great business ideas that i’d like to expand on
@Livefyre User Hey there. I didn’t see your tweet. Can you email me brad@thenextweb.com and I’ll shoot an invite over to you?
This one sounds awesome! Is it resistant to retweeting same tweets again and again? :) I would definetly give it a try building a mashup service with some cool info about different subjects, filtered, with a great design. IFTTT FTW!
If I could try ifttt then I would automate all kinds of chores I wish I could automate now.
I could do a lot of funny jokes to my friends! …and more seriously some interesting automations in online publishing and creative alerts.
I would love to create an electronic Mobius loop with ifttt and see what happens:
1) If bookmark tagged “tweet” then send to twitter with hashtag “#ifttt”.
2) If tweet with “#ifttt” then bookmark with “tweet”.
Seriously, I’d love a better way to curate all of the content that comes across my different platforms in a day (RSS, Twitter, etc.)
I’ve also posted the prerequisite tweet. :)
@Derek Brown Drop me a line — brad@thenextweb.com and I’ll send an invite.
I’d use IFTTT to alert friends and family with text messages when we release a new app or update! Would love to get in on this!
I’m definitely interested in checking the ifttt service out. Tweeted about it and everything.
It appears I never mentioned what I’d do with ifttt. I’d like to see if it could be used as a reliable alarm and have it call and or text my phone whenever needed.
@Michael Parness Let’s do it! Email me — brad@thenextweb.com for your invite.
I’d like to use ifttt to automatically earn an invite to betas from TNW… reckon that’s possible?
@Jono Mallanyk Yes. Email brad@thenextweb.com
@Brad McCarty Thanks Brad!! :)
Would like to post voice updates to Facebook friends, interesting enough?
I would like to auto post my awesome curation on Diigo / Instapaper to my Twitter followers !
Please?
using it since the star-up :)
pretty good, though waiting for SMS in other countries (like Italy, twitter does not have this x(
If thirsty Then Beer Me?
I would like to tie it into a WordPress site. When a file or commnet gets posted on the site either I get texted or it gets automatically gets posted to FB/twitter depending on the tag defined.
Maybe if a file is updated/modified in Dropbox you get a text.
It would be interesting to play around with it and see what it’s capabilities are.
WOW. Being able to “call-in” my tweets between rush hour driving times would allow me to finally safely tweet while driving!!! :-D I’d love an invite if there’s any left!
I’m pretty lazy. It’s time to put the computers to work! This would be awesome, it’s like digital ducttape, tying events together. Would love to try it out, I find myself already promoting this to my friends although I can’t show them anything.
And if I can make it order me pizza on a certain day and time, then, well…that’s how the internet was supposed to be!
Would love to check this out. Seems like one of those – “why doesn’t this exist already” type of ideas. I’m always up for automatting things -
I’d like to try and build a sort of waterfall effect, similar to the Mobius loop Derek Brown already mentioned, using all the channels that ifttt provides. Depending on how many channels there are, I could use it as a sort of hourglass. Does this qualify?
I would love one this is amazing, loads of possibilities
see my tweet
http://twitter.com/?status=I%20am%20automating%20the%20Internet%20thanks%20to%20http://ifttt.com%20and%20%40TNW%20–%20http://tnw.to/17MT0#!/Xavi_izaguirre/status/30031062411251713
Sounds like a great idea, any invites left? I mostly want to play around and see what I can do but one idea is to see if I can do ‘if tweet has a link then save the link to delicious’. Would also like to see if it could be used for monitoring/saving/notifying us of certain tweets from say, a competiting brand to that of our client.
I already tweeted about this but wanted to follow up on it. This would be an amazing application to be put to use in my business. I was an early adopter of JOTT and used it to tweet while I was out at the fields training athletes and driving in the car. I used to also broadcast messages to my team of coaches via JOTT. I felt alienated when JOTT changed its business model, and while I understand what they did, it still sucked!
I am now launching new websites and services targeted at soccer players and youth sport coaches. The majority of my products will be video based and I am using mobile platforms so that my content can be delivered in the field so information can be applied on location rather than absorbed at home and then regurgitated later. In keeping with that I would also like to be able to deliver content across sites, social services, and more with a “push of a button”.
Also, I am launching a TV show to drive traffic and build content and this would allow me to automate the notification process across all my services and may automate the “live streaming” services if I video on location at the fields.
I also have a “scavenger hunt” product I am working on that might be cool with this service.
Any invites left?
Tweeted (@alandistro), and running an online small business doing $1MM a year in sales, I have dozens of uses for this.
I’m late to the party. Hmmm, this is what I’d do with a beta invite to ifttt.
1. Turn off all my other forwarding and autoposting from different service which can be very unpredictable, and centralize in one place. Then this won’t happen: about a month ago, every song I listened to on blip.fm got tweeted and sent to Google Buzz, all 50+ of them. And I saved a bookmark for TBLOP to Delicious and accidentally cross-posted the URL to my publisher, as a breaking news story. Thankfully I caught it in time before anyone saw. I hope.
2. I’d QA it really well. I like to figure out ways to cross between totally different platforms, like running cell phone apps on a PC, or sending text messages to a landline. I can’t always figure out how, but it is fun to try.
3. If I liked it, I talk about it far and wide to anyone who’d listen. And I wouldn’t talk trash about it if I didn’t like it, because I’d been given the courtesy of a preview (I just would say “no comment”).
So, that’s what I’d do with a beta invite ifttt. But this was posted > 24hrs ago, so I certainly understand if all your beta invites are spoken for by now!
Currently my setup for RSS filtering and content forwarding is very cumbersome. Once that works like a charm, I would feel free to explore new applications.
I would like to see if it’s possible with ifttt to push my WordPress blogposts to my Facebook (and Twitter) and sync the reactions to the posts between Facebook and WordPress? I know you can already do this with Facebook but I think they made it unnecessarily complicated so I’m looking for a straightforward way to do it.
If new blog post, then tweet it.
If person x adds item to delicious with #y, then instapaper it
if CL post that matches x search, instapaper it
if tweet with #x and link, instapaper it
and so on
If my wife post a photo on facebook (propbably a mobile one of our daughter) upload it to our flickr pro account.
I own a small business that is growing (software development consulting services in cable TV and digital television industries). I am looking to automate some of my business process to help free up more of my time to focus on marketing, etc. This tool may be must what I am looking for, and I would love to get a beta trail.
ThanksSteve
I’d like to use iftt to combine with evernote, to automatically archive tweets based on certain conditions like including a link or by favouriting a tweet
if you have some invitation left, I’m more than interested. BTW, thanks for the review …
my mail is vkyrychenko.reg@gmail.com