Notify.me to Get At Your Twitter Replies

I hadn’t heard of Twply until I saw a tweet from @genieyclo referring to it. I retweeted because I know @genieyclo to be a trusted source and it seemed like a privacy situation for users who had given up their Twitter login and password to Twply. It wasn’t until later when I saw this post here on Black Web 2.0 that I realized the gravity of the situation.

There are a couple of reasons this pisses me off:

1. Any developer interested in extending, enhancing, or interfacing with Twitter has no choice but to ask you for your Twitter username and password. This is a limitation with Twitter. Their programming interface doesn’t allow for a better method of authenticating you. This Twply debacle will make users even more apprehensive about using any 3rd party Twitter application. I’m sure most of you were already suspicious.
2. This application was completely unnecessary, not innovative, and duplicative using applications which already exist.

Get Your Twitter Replies

I’ve previously written about Notify.me in regards to Facebook, but I also use it to catch all my Twitter replies and to see when people are tweeting about me. Here is how it works:

1. Sign up for Notify.me
2. Go to Twitter Search and find your replies. I’m “rahsheen” on Twitter and people often misspell it, so I did a search for “@rahsheen OR @rasheen”
3. To the right of your search results, you should see Feed for this query. Right-click on that link and copy it’s location.
4. Go back to notify.me and click Sources
5. Paste the URL of the search where it says Feed and click Add Feed

At this point, the power of Notify.me becomes apparent because you can receive your notifications by Email, SMS, Instant Messenger, or desktop application. You will see 4 icons for the filter you created. Click the methods by which you would like to be notified to activate/deactivate them. Make sure you visit Destinations to configure your email, cell phone, or IM information.

There are about a million ways that you can use notify.me to help you keep track of yourself and other things. Check out their their wiki for more information.

Many services out there want your Twitter credentials. We will see more in the coming year. The only way for this situation to be solved is for Twitter to update their API. Until then, it’s up to the Twitter community to point out the fakes. Someone must know someone, who knows the someone that created the application.

So, before you sign in, make sure you use a lifeline. Tweet a friend.