Twubs – it’s not the mean-spirited nickname the kids called us in high school, nor is it the Miami Vice detective opposite Don Johnson. Similar to Hashtags.org, Twubs is a Twitter aggregator that allows users to contribute on breaking news, popular trends, shared conferences and memes such as #followfriday and #musicmonday. In addition to indexing basic tweets, the service also displays photos and videos that share a common hashtag. Earlier today Twubs launched a free conference suite in the hopes that conference planners will take a cue from Gnomedex founder Chris Pirillo and incorporate back channels and live feeds into their events.
Launched in April 2009, the original Twubs allows users to edit topical pages and see aggregated media files. In addition to hashtag and image aggregation, users can tweet invites to followers, embed feed widgets, and add additional tag aliases. The new conference suite builds on this experience and offers event planners new options like embedded live streaming footage, meet up scheduling, and perhaps most interesting, the ability to moderate the broadcast of a live Twitter feed.
This means that event questions and comments can be broadcast on a large screen without the fear that presenters will be publicly heckled. CEO Tony Ferraro walked ReadWriteWeb through the product and showed us how administrators can edit screen headers and footers, remove comments, and vary the speed of the broadcast. In the spirit of openness, it’s of course discouraged to go overboard and ban criticism; however, it’s totally acceptable to do away with irrelevant or spam-related tweets that do not contribute to audience dialogue.
The broadcast tools coupled with attendee-based media aggregation, make Twubs conference suite a cross between live broadcast tool Ustream and community site Ning. Twubs also offers planning tools for Tweetups and conference-related mixers so that event attendees can instantly manage their RSVPs from one page. As the company plans to roll out third party calendar integration and an iPhone app in the coming months, Twubs might also begin to resemble Facebook events.
The question remains whether Twubs can deliver as an all-in-one conference solution, but judging by reviews on its initial offerings, the company is well on its way.
