What’s trending in your Twitter network? StrawberryJ.am has the answer

Every now and then, the green shoots of a really promising new Twitter app surface. One such app is StrawberryJ.am – a simple way to find out what’s hot among your Twitter friends. This week, I had a chat with one of the founders, Dennis Hettema about the value of ‘friend-based trends’.

What is StrawberryJ.am?

Still in beta and currently open only to those with invites, StrawberryJ.am connects up with your Twitter account and then sifts through your friend’s recent posts to figure out what’s been particularly hot in the last 24, 16 or 8 hours..

Dennis, an experienced developer, seasoned dotcom-er and one half of Hettema & Bergsten, explains:

“We are all about showing the best links shared within your own network on Twitter. We trend the links for your @account, Twitter lists, #tags and searches. The results are Reddit-like lists that are specific for your social network.”

The value of friend-based trends?

The beauty of the Strawberryj.am concept is that it’s not about filtering out the noise, more about making sure you don’t miss out of the really good stuff.

“I was always a highly infrequent Twitter-user as I could never really handle keeping up with the stream. Whenever I did decide to take a peek at my timeline, I virtually always found interesting links,” explains Denni. “So Strawberryj.am started with the question: ‘what were the most popular links that I missed today?’”

“For me, and I might be a little biased, it has completely changed the way I look at twitter. I check my strawberry stream in the morning and evening and use the daily email as a backup. It gives me a sense of calm because I know that anything that becomes popular will not be missed by me. I now use Twitter every day.”

So for Twitter users that don’t watch their streams 24/7, it’s a way to pick up on good stuff they’d otherwise miss. And for comms pros / those with particular topics they want to investigate in detail? That’s where the ability to see what’s hot within a Twitter list or hashtag comes in.

It’s early days for the app, and functionality is relatively limited, but I can see it blossoming into something really useful.

A friend or foe to spammers?

Often, a tool that makes Twitter better for bona fide users also has the unintended side-effect of giving spammers a leg up. Is this the case with StrawberryJ.am?

It is virtually impossible for spammers to dirty up your @account trends as these are links by people whom you actively choose to follow. Twitter lists are also fairly spam insensitive as they are (or at least should be) curated.

Search and #tags do tend to get spammy, though as spammers are learning how to hook in to Twitter trends. We are working on introducing silencing functions and would love to get in touch with the Proxlet guys to see if we can team up.

And what of those people who – legitemately – run several accounts. Could they skew the results? Yes, according to Dennis, but they’re working on ways to even this out, without penalising users.

Top tips to get the most out of StrawberryJ.am

I asked Dennis what users could do to make sure they get the best out of the new app.

Here are his tips:

• Be particular about who you follow. Automated systems can be gamed. “I created an account called @chicagofoodtest to see if I could be on top of Chicago food related news in my @account stream and… well… Need to know anything about that scene? Ask me!”
• Experiment and refine. “Set up some list & #hashtag trends and experiment with good combinations (my favourites at the moment: @scobleizer/most-influential-in-tech, #design, #recipe).”
• Set up your daily email “so you never, ever miss out.”
• Used timed retweets to reach the maximum audience. “Retweet from within the timeline using Bufferapp for maximum exposure.”

Ready for launch?

With StrawberryJ.am functioning pretty well, and the buzz on Twitter looking positive, I asked Dennis when we can expect them to open their doors to the public.

First of all, thanks to everybody for your amazing feedback! Up to now virtually everyone has been very positive about the product which is the best motivator I can imagine. Thanks :)

We would love to release the product to the public as most of the interface is quite stable, the reason why the doors are still closed is the immense load that this little system produces.

A week ago we had about 250 active testers who generated over 75.000 links per day. The numbers get very big very quickly. We’ve got some pretty awesome server people working on this though so as soon as we feel we can handle it, we will rip the training wheels right off!

We also have a mobile version in alpha, as soon as our server structure is optimized we will start work on making it launch ready. To be honest, I can’t wait!”

Want to try StrawberryJ.am right now?

If you want to try StrawberryJ.am before its official launch – and be part of the first group of users to provide feedback that shapes the future of the app – you’re in luck!

The lovely founders have been kind enough to give me 50 beta invites to share with readers.

Want one? Just head to http://beta.strawberryj.am/ and use the invitation code COMMS when you complete the sign up form.

Any problems, you can also tweet @StrawberryApp.

What do you think of StrawberryJ.am? Just another app, or the start of something really useful? Let me know your thoughts.