Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Pinboard and IFTTT to Twitter

A few weeks after Google 2.0 killed Google Reader Social, I decided I'd take the Twitter route.

My Twitter feed was active for about two months, but in time I gave up on Twitter (again). It didn't work as a memory management solution, I don't like the length limit and the lack of structure, and I don't expect Twitter to take better care of my data than Google. Worst of all, like Google, Twitter is free. I can't afford free.

Next I ran through PosterousandTumblr. They both failed, for different reasons. Worst of all, both are too expensive.

Lastly, I turned to Pinboard. I thought I'd use it restore access to my Google Reader JSON exports -- but that didn't work. I could have gotten my $10 back, but I like Pinboard's style, microblog post formats, export formats, import options, ownership, feed-focus, and bookmarklet -- and I really like the Reeder (and, via SendTo, Reader) integration. Most of all, I like paying for it. Oh, and it's Google-Free too [2].

So I've stayed with Pinboard. I tag my (all public) posts with 1 tap codes that are meaningful only to me - s for share, b for blogworthy, y for yammworthy. Each tag has its own stream. The 's' stream is really aimed at Emily, but anyone can consume it. It shows up in her copy of Reeder.app and on her iGoogle page.

No, it's not Google Reader Social. Then again, nothing is. I've come to think of GR Social as a future-fluke, a transient window into a future that might never be. Pinboard isn't GRS, but it's the best microblog/share platform in the mundane world. It beats the heck out of Twitter and (shudder) G+.

Except Twitter, despite my neglect, refuses to die. So I decided to try injecting my Pinboard shares into the Twitter stream. Pinboard doesn't support this, and they don't intend to. However IFTT supports both Pinboard and Twitter, so I now tweet from Pinboard via IFTTT (recipe) [1]

For example:

It mostly seems to work, though I don't know what happens if my Descriptions are too long.

For the moment then, I share the same items in two places:

[1] In my own task I have a colon between Title and Description, otherwise they run together in Twitter.
[2] Is it Google's ambition to be more disliked than AT&T?

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