Review: Swurl

Posted on the July 16th, 2008 under Goin' to Town by Jeff

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Wow. I think I’m more impressed with Swurl than MobileMe right now. Of course, they’re totally unrelated, but Swurl “just works” whereas MobileMe has stumbled out of the gate and almost had me cussing this evening.

I myself stumbled over Swurl in a blog this afternoon and wondered what it was. The blogger compared it to Tumblr, which I love. When I got home, the name had stuck with me, so I looked it up. After realizing that it claimed to be able to “bring your life together,” I took about 5 minutes plugging in the various microblogging services I use - Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku, Last.fm, etc. (the kitchen sink). 

Imagine my slow-spreading smile of delight as I watched Swurl swirl all my RSS streams and feeds together into an attractive and amazing blend of technology. It even pulled in the friends that I follow on various services! Check out my swurl page: journeyguy.swurl.com. With a quick Photoshopped header, I had an amazing website in less than 15 minutes!

I highly recommend you to try the same thing - especially if you use any of the social website services and microblogs mentioned above. Tell me if you’re not impressed.

One AMAZING feature is how it creates a visual archive of all your past posts - almost instantly! The view below is what mine looks like when you click on my “Timeline.”

The only thing that Swurl appears not to do is to allow you create an entry there. You can comment on everything - which is very cool! However, it is true to its description - it seeks only to bring your web-life into one location. So you can still blog, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. (By the way, if you’re not using hellotxt.com to update your various sites, you could be saving a lot of time.)

In the long run, Swurl may capture the devotion of bloggers everywhere. It surpasses many other similar services in ease of use and graphic appeal. Who needs Friendfeed when there’s Swurl? If you happen to set up a site at Swurl, let me know in the comments so I can swing by and see!


5 Responses to 'Review: Swurl'

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  1. Lou said, on July 16th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    I just created one of those accounts. It is amazing how fast it tracked your content (even years ago). I haven’t played around much but it looks very interesting.

    Lous last blog post..Wordless Wednesday

  2. Michael said, on July 16th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

    just created a swurl account. michaelwarnold.swurl.com

    Michaels last blog post..What the?!?!

  3. Jeff said, on July 17th, 2008 at 9:37 am

    @Lou: What is your addy?
    @Michael: I hope they provide a way that we can link to other friends’ swurl pages.

  4. ryan said, on July 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Swurl looks amazing. I set up an account (thefamilybush).

    However, it doesn’t support the main things I want, viz. VIMEO and MUXTAPE. Also, it won’t let me import other feeds (like my blog).

    ryans last blog post..K-Mart Parking Lot. Afterdark.

  5. Jeff said, on July 18th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    @Ryan: Great, I’ll add you as a friend on Swurl. I know they’re working hard to include some of the very things you mentioned. But what in the world is MUXTAPE?

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