There is a lot of competition among the internet heavy hitters to get their sites and actions integrated with other sites. You see +1 and “like” buttons all over the web, and it’s easy to post updates to Facebook from Foursquare, for example. But this sort of integration is difficult to count on, and only tends to affect the biggest and most social sites, and even then haphazardly. For example, what if you want to link your Twitter posts directly to your Google+ account? Unless you’re a handy developer with access to the relevant code (or you work for Google and control the internet), you’re out of luck.
Until now.
That’s where “If This, Then That” comes into play. IfTTT is a site designed around the idea of being the linkage point – the conjunction junction, for all you Schoolhouse Rock fans – between sites across the web globally. Now you can link specific actions – such as posting to Twitter – with specific other actions – such as posting to Google+ – across essentially any platform on the web. IfTTT calls these linkages “recipes” and allows users to share them with others on the net, meaning particularly handy recipes could function essentially as adaptor apps for a great many users.
That’s just the beginning for IfTTT though. The site could easily be used to link physical objects connected to the net with recipes for initiating actions – for example, a thermostat could link to a Twitter post about arrival times being delayed and set itself to warm the house at the new arrival time. And the company has attracted big money from venture capital investors; it’s clear that the potential we see in the firm is being widely perceived by the industry at large, and given the array of capabilities already present and the many avenues for expansion, it’s no wonder why.
Related posts:
- Twitter Fights Back
- Google+ Still Plussing
- Google Algorithms Continue Morphing
- Google+ – Onward and Upward
- Fake Review Sites Proliferate
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 at 5:52 am and is filed under Cartoon Songs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.