Blogging Tips

Last month, Sharon Hall did a fantastic interview with John Gotts, a co-founder of Chum.ly - ”a place to broadcast your blog to people following you on SMS, Twiter, Facebook, Blogspot, and ultimately all of the top social sites”. Since then, the site has really evolved with its new Twitter integration. Plus, today they unleashed their long-awaited iPhone app. So now, not only can you use Chum.ly as a basic Twitter client (and soon Facebook client) but you can also do so from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

As previously mentioned, Chum.ly has a 10,000 character limitation (as opposed to 140) and is invite-only in order to keep out spammers and such. So, Chum.ly is great for posting longer tweets and Facebook status messages as well as convenient for posting short blog posts on Blogspot. Currently you can only check your timeline, replies and messages for Twitter but Facebook is in the works for the near future.

The site is built around a friendly community where you can find users talking about everything from sports to music. They encourage the use of long URLs as opposed to short, so that users know what they are clicking on before they click it. They also do not tolerate spamming or advertising of any kind. When creating posts you can also add documents, images and keywords. Attachments are not shown inline though, you’ll need to click on the link to view it (in a popup window). There is also an “in context” feature that will let you view full conversations in a unique threaded view.

On the right-hand sidebar you can switch between Chum.ly and Twitter (and soon Facebook). For Chum.ly you can view: your timeline; all Chum.ly posts; post from everywhere (Chum.ly, Twitter); conversations; favorites; replies; inbox and outbox. So it doesn’t get too confusing, Chum.ly addresses users with a / (backslash) as opposed to the @ (at sign used for Twitter). There are also groups that you can create and join.

For Twitter you can view: your timeline; who’s following you; who you’re following; replies; inbox and outbox. Under “following me” you can follow back those who you may not be following. Under “I’m following” you can unfollow those who you don’t want to follow anymore. Though the integration may be limited, fixes and new additions are still being put into place.

The iPhone app is in the very early stage but seems to be coming along nicely. The home tab shows your Twitter timeline. At the moment you can only reply to users from the app. A known issue is that it seems to insert /username as opposed to @username. The only fix seems to be to manually delete / and insert @ so your reply will be sent back to Twitter. Then there’s the “world” tab where you can see all Chum.ly posts and then post from “everywhere” (Chum.ly and Twitter combined). You can also search for people, view your favorite Chum.ly posts, view your profile and go to a certain users profile (by typing their username). Lastly, of course you can create new posts and broadcast them to Chum.ly, Twitter, Facebook and/or Blogspot as well as add attachments.

The site and app are both still very new but there is a lot of room for growth and improvement and it definitely shows potential. What are your thoughts? Does Chum.ly have staying power? Since Chum.ly is invite only, so you’ll need to request an invite from the site. I can send you an invite personally, but I’m sure you don’t want to post your email in the comments section. You’re welcome to send me a message on Facebook (which I check most often) with your email address if you don’t want to wait for an invitation.