Chatter – Friendly Tumble Blogging

“Garrick knocks Pownce … what will he think of Chatter?” – Bruno Bornsztein

1. Finally, a web app that knows how to handle a new account – Bruno sends me an invite via email.
2. I click the link. Chatter asks me my name – then emails me a password. That’s it. Beautiful.
   If you’re building or have built an account-based web app, take note. You don’t need anything more to let me in ¹. In fact, every additional form field makes it more likely I leave promptly.
3. Email give me the pass and a link, sending me to the profile page.
   2 suggestions here; I want a URL for my photo – not an upload, and I have no idea what to put in ‘About Me’. Other than that – 4 more fields. Excellent.
   Note: I still have no idea what Chatter is, and it already makes me happy.
4. Now I’m in. Chatter is tumblr with friends ² and, it’s using the same bucketed-approach as Pownce. The system should either know, or not care what things are. I shouldn’t need to tell it.
5. While there still aren’t feeds or an publicaly-linked API ³, there is a Firefox plug-in and a bookmarklet – making adding things to almost as easy as could be.
6. Bruno & Ben ⁴, provide a way to give you money and I say you beat Pownce on this round.

1. **cough** OpenID **cough**
2. I’m not a fan of tumble blogs and don’t have an account at tumblr for 2 reasons; Like the iPhone and television – they’re for receiving – not for creating – and I’m cool with writing extremely short posts on this blog (everything’s searchable and append-able then). That’s me, and how I blog.
3. Only email alerts, argh! I do not want my friends getting near my spam filter!
4. Ben’s tumble blog is fantastic – economics, politics, fun. Yeah, I know, the triumvirate.