May 25, 2011

ifttt – Or: If This Then That – Personal Producitvity And Love At First Sight

When I first read about iftt I thought nice idea. Less an hour I got my invitation (btw: I have 5 invites for the ifttt that go–first come, first serve–the comments to this blog-post) – and I am thrilled. Love at first sight. The simplicity, the beautiful, foolproof process that you cannot fail to accomplish. The endless number of conceivable combinations. The customization built into it. In one short sentence: so far the best automation tool for people like me who have no clue how to program.Let me show you…

1. Start with the IF – the trigger channel:

There are lots of other triggers available: Facebook, Youtube, RSS, Delicious, Craigslist, SMS, Wordpress, Phone Call (?), flickr, Google Reader, Vimeo, Tumblr, stocks and of course my choice Twitter:

Activation is done via Oauth.

2. Choose the trigger even:

4-ifttt-create-a-task-twitter-choose-trigger

Again, there is an amazing variety, such:

Tweets near you
@ mentions of yourself
New direct message
Tweet with a link from you
Tweets match a search query
Tweets by a specific user…

5-ifttt-create-a-task-twitter-create-trigger

3. Choose the THEN - the action channel:

Almost the same variety as with the trigger channel. Some option does not work, such as Craigslist (not automated creation of ads) or RSS feed. Also, drive-by check-ins to foursquare via iftt will also not be possible… ;)

I chose email: Whenever @StefanW is part of tweet, I want to receive an email, including the full text of the tweet…

…as well as the link to the tweet.

10-ifttt-complete-actions-fields-customize-message

Now, give this action a name and you're finished.

Worked in my case by the way nicely:

Full tweet: RT @stefanw: "Here's Who Ended Up Getting #Screwed By #Twitter" @AlleyInsider http://read.bi/kJbN3vhttp://twitter.com/MMidas/status/73449549607337984

4. Monetization? Freemium, my guess…

I now recreated a feature of Twitter's web client and used 1 out of 10 rules that are currently available. I guess we will see that limit to be lifted for a few bucks per month–and ifttt in my eyes is a service worth paying for.