Twitter tops-up notifications, Topify turbo-charges them

By Rich Trenholm on 07 May 2009, 2:35pm

Twitter has today made a significant change to its notification emails, which inform you when you ensnare a new follower with your witty musings. But there's still a long way to go for Twitter to get it right, which is where Topify comes in, turbo-charging your alerts.

Twitter's notifications have switched from a plain-text email with a link for your new follower, to an HTML message with more detail, as shown above. The email address also appears to have changed, so you may need to update your email filters. You now see the follower's avatar and their vital statistics: who they follow, who follows them and how many updates they've posted.

It's a start, but none of this information is particularly useful when deciding whether to return that follow. The tweeter's profile and, most importantly, their most recent tweets, are what we use to make that decision -- step forward Topify, which does just that, as shown below.

To sign up, simply enter your Twitter name and password, and the email you want to receive your notifications. You will then get a unique Topify email address, which you add to your Twitter settings. As well as showing a follower's profile information and recent tweets, Topify allows you to follow by simply replying to the email. You don't need to leave your email program to follow folk. You can also unfollow and block tweeters, and reply to direct messages, all by replying to the Topify notification email, again saving you a trip to your browser or Twitter app. Which is, in a word, ace.

Although Topify co-founder Arik Fraimovich is keeping future developments close to his chest, he did hint to us that "there's a reason that there's no blue bird in our logo or that we aren't called Tw-Something". Souped-up notifications for other social media, perhaps? Topify is currently in beta and invitation-only, but we have a whopping 300 invites for lucky Crave readers here. And don't forget to follow cnetuk for all the latest gadget news and tech features. Later, tweeters!