I originally wrote this as a guest post for Geoff Webb (aka RadicalRecruit). You can find it on his blog here, but as always, I’ve posted back to mine for the sake of my archives! Oh, and the beta invites I mention at the end? I have a couple more….
I’m a huge fan of start-up firms, particularly those that like to make our lives easier. Many of us now maintain multiple online presences which not only require updating but also monitoring and reaction. Whilst I’m no advocate of an automated response, there are certainly times when a certain event should trigger a certain response. Indeed, there might be some actions you undertake on a regular basis which could be more efficient.
A recent entrant to the market, www.ifttt.com, may be just what many of us need. The name comes from the core principle of the service: If This (is) Then That. The service runs on the concept of triggers – not particularly unusual, but perhaps more wide-ranging than anything else I’ve seen recently. For example, how many times have you been tagged in someone else’s photos on Facebook and wished you’d picked it up sooner? If you maintain a blog, is the distribution perfect – or could it be wider, or more efficient?
Ifttt seeks to answer these questions, but with a level of integration not usually seen. Most sites like this integrate with one and other through API calls, which is fine, to a point – but Ifttt will also integrate with your phone service. The earlier example of a photo tagged on Facebook? Ifttt can send you a text.
There are date & time triggers, stock prices, activity on Facebook Pages, changes in the weather, all the mainstream social sites, plus a number of the newer contenders. There are 28 channels to choose from at the moment – and no doubt they’ll be adding more. So far, I have 14 channels set up – which gives me a possible task combination of 672 options!
EDIT 14/Sept/11
Been keeping an eye on this one – seems to be gaining more interest, but seen a few people querying what they’d actually use it for. Hat tip to Heather on this one, she’s just tweeted a couple of great use cases:
- Send your Instagram mobile pictures straight to Flickr
- Add any links you tweet to your bookmarks in Delicious
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