TWPLY is new service that tracks personal @replies and sends them to your designated email inbox. Seems simple enough and may be ideal for those high volume personal and corporate brands that need to actively monitor inbound tweets without having to stay connected directly to Twitter, Twitter Search, or a third-party service.
I’m testing the service now and will report back with my experience.
NOTE: When you log in, TWPLY will post a tweet to your twitter timeline that reads, “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!” Many consider this to be Twitter Spam and unfortunately it’s turning people off to the service.
UPDATE: TWPLY is officially hated by the Twitter community and in less than 24 hours, was already sold on SitePoint. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD.
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Discussion
It looks like you can turn off that “just started using” spam (er, tweet) at setup time.
I’m TOTALLY not a fan of any service that tweets on my behalf without authorization. Twply’s approach to do that is making sure I never use the service, and the fact that it says “support Twply” (and doesn’t explain exactly what “support” entails) makes their service notoriously bad in my opinion. All my friends have been spamming about them lately (I’m guessing that’s how you found out about it, Brian–or maybe I’m wrong).
Pix.ly, which people were abuzz about yesterday, is quite similar. You can opt out, but the small text is often missed when you first type in your username and password.
It’s nice for Twitter services to want to be known, but this is NOT the way to do it.
It may well be a good service, but this kind of spamming is evil and sets a terrible precedent. Not only was it not clear that “support us” meant spam all of my followers, but I explicitly unchecked it! Besides, why would I endorse a tool before even having a chance to use it?
More ranting on my blog:
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/01/faux-viral-maketing/
Here’s an app that provides the same service without “spam” or the need to provide login information. http://replies.twitapps.com/
Problem solved.
This is a nice service. Currently already up for sale!