Just a few minutes ago Echofon and Tweetdeck announced the availability of preview beta releases of their respective twitter clients featuring twitter’s new user stream API. The API essentially brings real time to twitter; no more refreshing required. When someone replies, retweets or favorites a tweet, you’ll see it all happen in your stream milliseconds after the person has done it.
It really has to be seen to be believed. If you were an avid Friendfeed user, this should bring back memories.
If you’re keen to try this, as I expect you will be, you can pay $20 for a registered version of Echofon for Mac, or sign up for one of Tweetdeck’s preview releases here.
nah, that looks confusing -_-
you could sit all day just watching at the screen lmao.
better stick to the old fashion way
agree…. I mark as favorite the last message I read and then refresh and I know which twit was the last one I read… with this stream I can’t make up from down.
This is why it needs to be animated smoothly, none of this instant appearance rubbish. I eyes can detect motion you know! MOTION!
Interesting. I agree lists will be important with a feature like this however there is a downside to lists….they don’t show the new retweets. They still work for old RT style retweets. That is a HUGE limitation and makes lists unusable for monitoring your twitter stream.
How do you keep up?!?!
honestly, i don’t.
It is impossible to keep up with a stream like this…
Cool, but useless… :)
Zee, the link for the Tweetdeck is incorrectly the same as Echofon’s.
Wow! I’m worried this would be a little hard to keep up with. I’d probably use it though because I feel like I have to refresh the page every two seconds anyway!
Hmmmm, well, way to catch up to the past boys.
Tweetgrid.com has been doing this for like….forever?
No way would I use this! If it’s not important enough for me to take the time to read it before I decide to refresh the page, it’s not important enough to be in my stream. Yet another useless tool. Seems twitter is becoming more about sending messages into the void and none every being received. Sad, really.
This isn’t that new actually, it was just a matter of time before Twitter released this and some apps implemented it. For Twitter Search, this have been around for a while. See for example our realtime backchannel solution Twingly Live for the keyword Spotify: http://live.twingly.com/spotify
What a stupid invention this is…. now you can’t even read the tweets anymore.
Although this has been possible for ages using the Twitter Streaming API the User Stream makes things even easier for developers.
As the comments above have highlighted the user experience isn’t really being considered. The real-time experience is being used as a gimmick and clearly TweetDeck and Echofon will get some traction with this.
We’ve been pushing real-time Twitter updates through our Kwwika service for around 5 months now and have built a few applications with exactly the same user experience (or lack of one) just for show and it does have the wow factor.
I’m guessing Twitter are only opening up the user stream to certain companies but if anybody wants this functionality in their website or application now then why not get in touch with us. That said, keep the user experience in mind.
Oh, for a better use of this real-time push technology have a look at search.twitter.com vs a Kwwika search.twitter.com video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweAhqN4Sfw
“Hol-ee cow”… amazing!
Sounds personable to me dude.
http://www.anonymous-surfing.es.tc
I agree it’s too much, I think my head would explode!
What’s so mind blowing about it? Making Twitter into IRC – something that’s been around for even longer than the web.
You’re either too easily impressed, not old enough to remember when IRC was big or not web-savvy enough to realise this isn’t that big a deal.
Why is this mind blowing? It’s a chat room. These existed in 1992. IRC with graphics….Look, an automobile! Mind = blown.
Looks a very efficient App, perhaps too efficient?
Very interesting to see the remarks here and the thrill it brings to people. Remember, at the beginning Twitter offered the possibility to use Twitter through IM. I used it with Google chat for quite a while and that was great. I will love going back to no refreshes.
Interesting.. going to download this file now to share with my next presentations abt social media. :) twitter plays important role :)
This blew your mind? What are you, retarded?
I love it :)
Hmmm.
How does it help really?? I think its confusing and a tad too distracting…I pity those with vertigo!!