We soft-launched a “status” feature in Pulse about a week ago, and it’s already proving to be very popular. But for people using lots of different services, having yet another place to type in what they’re up to is hardly a convenience.
Indeed, if you’ve been following the Plaxo story closely, you know that we’re not trying to build “yet another social network”. Instead, we’re on a mission to help bring about an open version of the Social Web, one defined by interoperability between sites, with you in control of your data and content and how it moves between services.
So, in line with that vision, we’re enhancing the Pulse status feature with the ability to synchronize it with other services, starting today with Twitter. And what’s really cool is that you have a choice of one-way or two-way sync. What does that mean?
If you set up status sync to Twitter, when you update your status in Pulse, it will be instantly updated in Twitter. (And, as you’re typing, you’ll see a character countdown from 140 and the ability to shrink links via tinyurl.)
(In addition, if you’ve already installed the Twitter app on Facebook, that status message you originated in Pulse will update your status inside Facebook!)
And, if you also choose to sync from Twitter to Pulse? When you’re in Twitter – okay, admit it, that may be most of your waking hours – your tweets will automatically update your status in Pulse. (And don’t worry, we do some smart “echo cancellation,” so you’ll only see one copy of your status update in each place.) At release time, such updates in Pulse are not instantaneous, but they will be soon.
If you haven't hooked up your Twitter to you Pulse, start by adding the feed. You'll be prompted with how to also set up sync status. If you're already feeding your tweets into Pulse, just go edit your Profile Settings.
We think this is both a really useful feature and a great demonstration of things to come when social sites interoperate. You could also imagine that future versions of the status feature might sync with other services, such as Jaiku. Let me know which ones you’d most like to see. Just send a tweet to johnmccrea!