Toluu and Twubble: Forget Searching and Look for Suggestions
by
on April 05, 2008,
With all the social media tools out there, the second most time-consuming activity after actually reading everyone you are following is figuring out who you should be reading. Most Twitter users and blog readers spend a significant amount of time trying to find the most relevant information. Aggregators like FriendFeed (our coverage) and Socialthing (our coverage ) can help, but two suggestion engines have emerged recently to help you.
The first, Toluu, imports your feeds and then matches you up with other Toluu users. Based on your feeds and interests, the service will search for other users with interests similar to yours, almost like a dating service, with top matches listed first. You have the choice of adding people as contacts, or just adding suggested feeds. If you add friends, it also compares you and gives you a match percentage, as well as suggests any of their feeds you might want to read.
Toluu creator Caleb Elston rates as one of the fast responders with bugs, which always wins a fan in a bug magnet like myself. When I ran into problems using OpenID for sign-up, resetting my password, and importing my OPML file, I received a quick response and fast fixes. As far as how helpful the service is, it may work better for anyone not reading a lot of Web 2.0 blogs; I tend to get a lot of suggestions to read Louis Gray (since I already have Techmeme as a feed, I figure it would just be a duplicate).
The other was just released today by none other than Google Android developer Bob Lee, known in developer circles as Crazy Bob. I've been following his development of Twubble, a suggestion engine for Twitter followers. If you've ever spent time checking out the people that your follows pay attention to, you'll appreciate the time saving of Twubble.
Twubble goes through 30 of your follows who've updated most recently, and suggests a maximum of 100 suggestions, ranking them based on the number of people you like who follow them. In the already inbred world of Web 2.0, none of my suggestions are really a surprise, but for those starting out on Twitter or looking for people that they missed, it's a valuable tool. The limit prevents time-outs from API calls to Twitter (always an issue) as well as any crash if you happen to be following anyone like Jason Calcanis or Robert Scoble.
I had a chance to talk to Bob a little bit about Twubble, and discovered he used a very un-Web-2.0 development process. The entire process took him two days, most of which was his learning curve with the Twitter API. Twubble is written in Java using Google Web Toolkit, without a hint of Ruby in sight. Considering that it managed to handle some that I follow like Scott Beale and Jason Calcanis' large follow lists, I think it will scale with no problems.
It's the weekend, traditionally slow in the news department, but if you are looking for new people to read and follow, Toluu and Twubble may both be worth experimenting with.
Note: I did talk to Bob about potential hosting concerns with Twubble, and it may be moved to a different location. Check his blog if my link isn't updated when you go to use the service.
