In these hard times, it takes something pretty nifty to get us to write about a Twitter app; our eyebrows rose an inch or two when we were told about ReadTwit, an RSS application that makes Twitter smaller, faster, and better for those who need to find and consume interesting links.
ReadTwit scrapes the tweets from everyone you follow and throws any links therein into an RSS feed just for you, with dupes deleted and URL shorteners eliminated. Users are then able to control the display, filter out users, or ban hashtags. Read on for screenshots and more.
As you can see, ReadTwit is compatible with a few good feed readers; we decided to test the app in Google Reader.
As soon as we clicked the Google Reader link, we were subscribed and checking out some very real-time news from our friends around the web, complete with images and summaries from the linked-to pages:
And here’s a look at ReadTwit’s filters and display options in action:
A related Firefox add-on, Tweecious, posts all the links in your Twitter stream to your Del.icio.us account. Still, we prefer ReadTwit’s filtering capabilities and Google Reader integration.
ReadTwit is a product from Lionite, a two-year-old web dev shop in Israel. “One of us came up with the idea,” reads their About page, “and it seemed simple enough, so we said ‘What the heck?’ The project took several days from concept to launch.”
Although they acknowledge the app’s not a life-changer, the ReadTwit team is correct in stating that it makes a common web service easier to use. Many thanks to Ezra Butler for the pointer.
