Anouncing Twype.exe
I've been playing around with posting Twitter Tweets to my Skype Mood. The alpha is just finished and you can download it from here. — It's a small Windows tray program. — Once every 5 minutes it checks your Twitter account and grabs the latest tweet.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two days after TechHit shipped OutTwit, which pipes tweets into Outlook, Voidstar's Twype.exe extends the same pattern to instant messaging: a small Windows tray program that polls Twitter every five minutes and copies the latest tweet into the user's Skype mood message.
The author has been circling this territory for weeks — arguing in late September that Twitter could carry images and audio as 'payloads' the way RSS proposals once did, a comparison he himself flagged as speculative. Twype.exe is the practical, unglamorous version of that thesis: don't extend Twitter's format, just syndicate its output into whatever app people already have open.
First-order effects
- Skype contacts see a user's latest tweet as their mood message within five minutes of posting, making the IM presence field a passive Twitter broadcast channel with no extra effort from the user.
Second-order effects
- Tools like OutTwit and Twype.exe position Twitter as a status input for desktop software generally, so each new bridge raises the cost for Skype or Microsoft to ignore Twitter as a de facto presence feed rather than a competitor.
Third-order effects
- If the bridge-tool pattern holds, status becomes something users write once and syndicate everywhere, pushing platforms toward open APIs for reading and writing presence — the same dynamic the author argued RSS went through after its own payload debates.
The trend: In late 2007 Twitter is turning into a personal status hub that small third-party utilities pipe into email, IM, and productivity apps.