Mozzler

The Twitter Engineering Blog: The Anatomy of a Whale

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:26:07 +1030

The Twitter Engineering Blog: The Anatomy of a Whale

Mozzler Beta: Combined Web-based Twitter & Facebook Client

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:28:09 +1030

I am pleased to announce a greatly enhanced update to the Mozzler Beta, now with support for Twitter lists and popout windows among many other features.

Mozzler aims to help Twitter and Facebook users read and discover news that interests them. Updates from friends of both social networks are merged into a single stream. All twitter streams (lists, users and search results) provide a much better reading experience than other twitter clients, with all URL’s expanded upon with full headlines.

The Mozzler Beta is invite only, but follow @mozzler_news on Twitter to be alerted to new invites. See the bottom of this post for more details.

Lets jump straight to some screenshots…

Twitter Lists

As you would expect, reading a Twitter List through Mozzler looks very similar to reading your News Stream. All twitter links are expanded upon, providing full headlines, page descriptions and images pulled from the underlying page.

There is also the option of displaying “Links Only”. This option only shows tweets that contain links, turning the twitter list into a stream of news similar to RSS.

Mozzler also has detailed support for categories of Twitter Lists. You can easily browse Twitter lists and then view each one as a stream of content. Each list shows common tags associated with the list and one-click subscription buttons.

Popout Windows

Each stream of content (Facebook, Twitter, Searches, Lists etc.) can be popped out into a resizable column. This enables you great flexibility to place the stream anywhere you like on your desktop.

Also note on the screenshot that some items near the top are highlighted in green. These are new items that have been pushed to the stream after the page has loaded. The page title bar also indicates how many new items there are. A simple swipe of the mouse over the item will mark it as seen.

Other Mozzler Features:

Read a single stream that merges your Twitter and Facebook friend updates into one
Browse messages received via Facebook and Twitter in a single stream
Easily browse users favourite tweets
Support for Facebook comments and retweeting of Tweets
Support for trending twitter topics
Enhanced view of tweets, with lots of information about URL’s added for esier scanning
Suggestions — Mozzler will suggest twitter lists and people to follow based on your interests and tweeting history

Want an invite?

The first 30 people to retweet this post will receive an invite to the Mozzler Beta. Make sure you are following @mozzler_news first, so that you can receive the invite via Twitter Direct Message.

Currently, all beta users get 10 invites to hand out to their friends.

Will normal folks ever use twitter?

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:11:47 +1030

Will normal folks ever use twitter?:

Jeremy Toeman over at Live Digitally has written an excellent post describing the user experience issues with Twitter.

This is very close to the problem that Mozzler (about to re-enter private beta) is solving. It’s UI aims to achieve the following:

Quickly discover Twitter lists that users are interested in. It does this by analysing the users existing Twitter account OR Facebook account
Unifies a users Twitter and Facebook stream into a single stream
Automatically expands links found in tweets, auto-discovers relevant images, to make a twitter stream appear more like an RSS stream. This helps provide a lot more context around a tweet, improving the user experience.
When searching Twitter, Mozzler will also recommend lists that are associated with the keyword, again improving the user experience.

In reality, Twitter has outsourced most of their UI development to third parties via Twitter applications. As such (and recent comments have indicated) Twitter’s business model involves advertising via the Twitter API and the user experience of twitter.com is not an important concern for the time being.

If you are interested in being part of the Mozzler beta when it is available, follow @mozzler_news on Twitter to be informed of details when they become available.

RConversation: Google, China, and the future of freedom on the global Internet

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:10:47 +1030

RConversation: Google, China, and the future of freedom on the global Internet:

This is the most thoughtful article on the Google / China issue I have read and one of the most articulate blog posts I’ve read in a long time.

"… we realised that no matter how sophisticated the algorithms get, no matter how many machines..."

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:57:26 +1030

““… we realised that no matter how sophisticated the algorithms get, no matter how many machines we add to the network, our work is not about the triumph of technology, it is about the triumph of humanity.””

- Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter on why we can never rest

Mozzler Beta Opens Popular Twitter Lists To Public

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:40:28 +1030

Mozzler Beta Opens Popular Twitter Lists To Public:

We have opened to the public the most popular twitter lists to browse as a Mozzler stream. Here are the most popular twitter lists. Here is an example of the breaking news twitter list as a Mozzler stream.

Mozzler streams have several key features:

Option to only show tweets that contain links
Headlines and descriptions are displayed, providing a more RSS-like display
Videos and images are displayed within the stream

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the day or happily...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 09:56:47 +1030

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the day or happily holidays if you have other plans.

Here’s a fun video to get into the spirit of things “Must be Santa” - Bob Dylan.

For those who missed out on Mozzler beta invites, there will be more announced in the New Year, follow @mozzler_news to be first in line.

louisgray.com: Mozzler Filters Your Social Stream for Links, Displays Media

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:28:19 +1030

louisgray.com: Mozzler Filters Your Social Stream for Links, Displays Media:

A very good analysis of Mozzler by Louis Gray

Mozzler Video Preview: Facebook & Twitter Merged Into One

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:59:00 +1030

Today Mozzler is releasing a preview video of its new beta website. The service is currently invite only, however the video highlights the key features of the new website.

In contrast to the current Mozzler website, the new version is much more than just real-time search. Mozzler integrates with Facebook and Twitter, providing a single news stream of links and comments called the “Mozzler Stream”. News streams are also available for viewing Twitter lists, users and search results.

Mozzler News Streams

Mozzler uses a number of techniques to provide users with an enhanced view of links appearing in a news stream. Page titles and descriptions are displayed inline so users know exactly where the page leads. Videos are automatically embedded into the stream and images from twitter upload sites are expanded and displayed inline. Mozzler also scans the page for images that appear to be relevant to the specific page and displays those if found, helping add context to the link.

Social News Discovery

Users can connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts to show a single Mozzler Stream. This information is also used to recommend new users to follow. For example, a user may be friends with someone on Facebook, but not follow their friends Twitter account. Mozzler can provide the required connection and suggest the user follow their friends Twitter account.

In a similar fashion, Mozzler knows all the Twitter lists your friends are following (provided they are also using Mozzler). These lists are ranked based on the number of friends subscribed, providing recommendations on the best lists to follow.

Beta Invites

The Mozzler beta website is currently invite only. People wishing to get an invite should follow mozzler on twitter @mozzler_news for announcements of more invites becoming available.

On Friday 20th November I launched Mozzler, a real-time search...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:00:00 +1030

On Friday 20th November I launched Mozzler, a real-time search engine and news streaming website.

You can see a video of the launch above (6.5 minutes in)

Visit Mozzler now: http://www.mozzler.com/

Mozzler allows you to build a news stream from search keywords, twitter users (like twitter lists), specific websites and hashtags.

It is still early stages, however there will be some further enhancements coming shortly that help aggregate a personal news stream for users of social networks.