Anda penguna Twitter, anda pasti punya e-mail, anda juga saya jamin sering berkomunikasi lewat Instant Messaging (IM), mungkin YM/Gtalk,  beberapa aplikasi yang bisa digunakan untuk menerima tweet lewat IM memang sudah ada di pasaran, tapi ada satu lagi aplikasi lain yang memberikan layanan yang lebih unik, namanya TweetSwitch.

Aplikasi ini bisa digambarkan secara sederhana dengan kalimat : ‘lets you send and receive your tweets on instant messengers and email’. TweetSwitch memudahkan anda untuk mengatur tweet anda yang akan diterima oleh akun IM anda, dan aplikasi ini juga memungkinkan anda untuk mengatur urutan tweet yang akan anda terima, terutama jika anda mempunyai beberapa akun IM, misalnya untuk DM dari Twitter ingin anda menerimanya di Yahoo! Messenger (YM), kemudian jika YM itu tidak aktif anda ingin menerimanya di Google Talk (GTalk), maka anda tinggal mengaturnya, semua fasilitas ini bisa dinikmati.

Untuk menggunakan aplikasi ini, anda bisa menggunakan akun Twitter anda untuk sign in, setelah itu ada 3 kotak serta beberapa ikon. Untuk  menambahkan akun IM klik tanda + kemudian isi kolom yang ada, setelah itu tentukan fungsi tweet apa yang ingin anda terima di akun IM anda. Untuk mengetahui fungsi kotak-kotak yang ada di bagian tengah situs, anda bisa membaca petunjuknya di bagian kiri situs. Kotak-kotak itu berguna untuk mengatur akun IM mana yang akan menerima fungsi tweet pertama kali. Jadi jika anda men-drag akun YM anda ke kotak pertama untuk menerima DM, kemudian akun IM GTalk untuk kotak kedua, maka artinya anda akan menerima DM dari Twitter pertama kali, lewat YM kemudian jika ini tidak aktif maka anda akan menerimanya di akun GTalk.

TweetSwicth didirikan oleh tim yang juga mengembangkan Comufy, sebuah teknologi yang memungkinkan user untuk mengontrol bagaimana cara mereka menerima informasi. Dan TweetSwitch selain ditujukan untuk user yang tertarik dengan aplikasi ini juga diluncurkan untuk membuktikan bahwa teknologi Comufy siap dan mudah untuk digunakan, TweetSwitch juga merupakan sarana promosi bagi Comufy untuk mengkomunikasikan teknologi yang bisa digunakan olah pihak ketiga.

Tampilan situsnya memang sederhana, karena TweetSwitch lebih menonjolkan pada fungsinya. Selain aplikasi yang cukup menarik, TweetSwitch juga ternyata diisi oleh tim dari beberapa negara dan salah satu anggota tim ini punya teman di Indonesia, hmmm, mungkin kapan-kapan kita bisa undang dia untuk sharing tentang startup. Tapi untuk sementara, DailySocial berkesempatan untuk mewawancarai TweetSwitch, mari kita simak bagaimana pandangan mereka tentang internet, persaingan dan tentu saja kelebihan dari TweetSwitch.

DailySocial [DS] About Service background: Can you tell me about TweetSwitch, since when is the service website is? The story behind TweetSwitch and the reason why you launch this apps, and what do want to achieve from this apps?

TweetSwitch [TS]: For over 2 years, we have been developing a technology called Comufy (comufy.com) which allows users to control the way they want to receive their communications. For a particular company, users may want to receive a message on AIM, or Live messenger, or AIM etc. instead of receiving it via email. Typically, when there is any sense of urgency or real-time in the message, email is not good enough as they often get lost, end up in Spam, or are one of too many. The Comufy technology is now ready to be sold to third-party companies for their marketing strategy.

TweetSwitch is built on top of Comufy technology and was started in November 2009 as a technology showcase to prove the Comufy technology was ready and easy to use. The ambition of TweetSwitch is to prove the Comufy technology is ready to succeed where Twitter it self failed, by delivering tweets on IMs for millions of users. With TweetSwitch, there is no need to constantly monitor your Twitter feed or download any third-party Twitter client since messages are pushed to you, on the network of your choice.

Comufy currently support email, Live messenger, Yahoo! messenger, AIM, ICQ and gTalk. More networks such as Skype will be supported very soon.

DS : About Company background: Can you share your company background? Including how many employee do you have, and any plans to make it more bigger?

TS: Comufy, the company behind TweetSwitch has 6 employees: 4 Ph.Ds in computer science form the University of Kent, 1 designer and 1 business manager from Cambridge. We are a very international team: 1 French, 1 German, 1 South Korean, 1 Sri Lankan, 2 British. Comufy’s technology is applicable to endless number of scenarios, and we intend to grow over time to fill the market needs.

DS: About service detail: Can you tell me about the service that TweetSwitch give? The advantages compared to existing in the market ? How about the marketing campaign?

TS: TweetSwitch allows users to tweet and receive all of their tweets, DMs or mentions from any instant messenger. It is extremely easy to configure, yet very powerful. You can decide to receive your tweets on several IM accounts at the same time, which is ideal for a small company wishing to monitor its Twitter feed. Alternatively, you can also decide to receive your tweets on one account, and have a fallback option on a different account in case you were not online on the first account. TweetSwitch can be configured in an endless number of ways.

DS: About the level competition: Can you tell your opinion about the level of competition with existing applications on the market?

TS: Our competitors often support one network only, whereas TweetSwitch supports many. With broadcast and fallback options, we also give much more control to our users than any other existing tool on the market. For example, you may wish to receive your DMs directly on your phone using gTalk, but receive your tweets on Live messenger when you’re at home.

DS: About funding: How you gain revenue and can you tell me about your business model?

TS: While we do have a business strategy for TweetSwitch which we will reveal later, the main focus of TweetSwitch is to demonstrate the use of the Comufy technology which we are selling to third-party companies.

DS: About future plan: Can you tell me about future plan on TweetSwitch? Feature that you want to add? Any killer feature that you will launch?

TS: We intend to add support for more protocols and become the main Twitter-to-IM platform.
We will also incorporate support for lists and searches, making it easier for our users to monitor certain keywords or certain users.

DS: About international market share: Because we from Indonesia, can you tell me your opinion about the internet market volume at Asia especially in Indonesia? Did you know that several social networking apps are really famous in here, including Twitter, and how do you respond to it?

TS: The market in Asia is enormous. Twitter is catching up, but as you say, other social networking apps are also capturing a significant share of the market. For us, this is a very good thing, since we build on top of existing platform to simplify the lives of our users, so these networks are not a threat, but an opportunity.
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ps: Terima kasih untuk Sebastien Marion atas kesempatan wawancaranya.