Blogging Tips

Broadcast Your Blog With Chum.ly

Written by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online

I recently got an invite to try out Chum.ly. Co-founder John Gotts tells us about the service in this interview.

Describe Chum.ly in one or two sentences.

Chum.ly is a place to broadcast your blog to people following you on SMS, Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, and ultimately all of the tops social sites, to receive updates from these sites in one place, to post beyond 140 characters on Twitter, etc. with a link back to all of you post on Chum.ly, to post pictures, video or audio links, documents and more with links back to your chumly page, to read threaded conversations and to do it all in a safe invitation-only setting.

What makes Chum.ly different from Twitter and other microblogging services?

Chum.ly is probably most like Twitter in that it’s really a place for short messages, but that said, you’re not limited to the 140 character rule, though that is what appears on Twitter from Chum.ly. We want to be as easy as Tumblr, and we want to make sure we stay advertisement-free. Another difference is that we’re an invitation-only site so that we can keep out the spammers, get-rich-quick, “follow Friday” people and virus people. This makes for a better reading experience and a safer place to follow links. And as for linking to other sites, we don’t tiny the URLs on our site as we have a 10,000 character limitation, not 140, and so you actually see where you’re going before you open a potentially harmful site through a tiny URL.

link to other sites for publishing and receiving updates
add pictures, documents, videos and audio files
post more than 140 characters to Twitter and other sites with links back to Chum.ly to read the rest
add keywords below the text box for easy #tagging
threaded conversations
easily choose which social networks get the updates with the click of a button

Which social media accounts can you link to Chum.ly now?

Currently we link to a user’s SMS, Twitter and Blogspot.

Which social media accounts are you planning to integrate in the future – and when?

Facebook should be done tonight or tomorrow. We’ll then add Wordpress, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and others and in that order.

Why should bloggers consider using Chum.ly?

It makes it really simple to post to the many blogs you write across different social sites. It’s also going to be a great community of conscientious bloggers in that they will be invite-only and only after we review their Twitter posts or some other blog they’ve written. This ensures good content on Chum.ly. It will also be a safer blog as we screen for links to malware, which often appear in the top right corner with their profile and name on Twitter. If that leads to a malware site or some other bad site we don’t allow that user into our membership. We really are trying to create a safer smarter, easier way to broadcast out to your other blogs and social networks and to receive updates from those sites in one place.

What’s Chum.ly built on – and why?

We used Status.net as a base for the Chumly product because Evan (founder of Status.net) has a great product as a solid, secure base to building a micro-blog. An example is Phitter.com, which also uses their software or Identi.ca, which is Evan’s Twitter of Canada. For a copy of their 0.9.0 software go to Status.net.

Who’s behind Chum.ly and what’s their background?

I’m John Gotts and my father is John Wm. Gotts. We started this company back in June of 2009 and there are now forty people involved in its success. My father and I have been building companies on the Web since 1993. We found success in the anti-spyware and anti-spam space, where we continue to work since 2001. I’ve been involved in politics in Washington State and will be running for office in Idaho or Washington in 2012 for a U.S. Senate seat. I currently live near Palo Alto, CA and John Wm. lives in Idaho. The majority of the team is in California but now we’re in many states around the country and three outside the U.S.

What is your vision for Chum.ly?

I see Chum.ly becoming one of the main broadcasters to Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, Wordpress, Tumblr and other sites. We have other plans I can’t discuss right now that should introduce a new aspect to social networks. We filed a patent several months ago that could dramatically change the revenue model of social sites, without disturbing the flow of the sites or using advertisements. Beyond that I really just want to create a super-simple, safe, fun place to read blogs and to write your own.

Chum.ly is in beta – how can people try it out?

People can get an invite by visiting www.chum.ly and requesting an invite at the bottom of the page.