MuckRack collects the Twitter feeds from journalists. GiantRedCarpet amasses them from celebrities. And another displays tweets from musicians such as Oasis. Sawhorse Media is behind these aggregators, and they want to clean up the clutter on Twitter.
CBS anchor Katie Couric is explaining her trip from Riyadh to Kabul. The New York Times’ Damien Cave tweets on Florida foreclosures. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post admits he might be going the Bluetooth route soon.
These are all Twitter updates from these journalists’ individual accounts, amassed neatly on the website MuckRack. On one page, I saw these tweets among many others from journalists across the world. It’s a simple and useful service — MuckRack is a recently launched Twitter aggregator that pools tweets from journalists onto one source, one website. You don’t need a Twitter account to view the feeds; you just need some patience to scroll through the duds to reach the updates you truly enjoy.
MuckRack is the brainchild of Sawhorse Media, a Brooklyn, NY-based company focused on making Twitter easier to manage. “Let’s say you want to know what reporters are talking about,” says Sawhorse CEO Gregory Galant in a phone interview with DigitalJournal.com. “You can go to MuckRack and see the breaking news tweets from all these journalists.”
But not all of those 600 journos approved to be on MuckRack have newsworthy tweets. Twitter is often used a navel-gazing tool, so some tweets simply offer info on what restaurant is being considered for lunch, which song is blaring from office speakers and so on.
The true value of MuckRack can be seen in the timely tweets from journalists who consistently report on news about their beat. J.R. Raphael at PC World tweets on new tech innovations; CNBC’s Mike Huckman offers consistent updates on pharmaceutical news; and Guardian editor Janine Gibson writes about breaking news in the UK. The writers from CNET and Wired are also the more reliable Twitterers on MuckRack.
Galant says Sawhorse is launching a new aggregator every two weeks. In fact, last week Sawhorse released a Twitter aggregator for musicians, allowing music fans to check out the tweets from the likes of 50 Cent, John Mayer and Pearl Jam. Sometimes, Sawhorse adds Twitter accounts of bands that haven’t tweeted yet, such as Blink 182.
This week, Sawhorse launched Inkpill, a Twitter aggregator of designers. The site is aggregating 130 designers from around the world (250 have requested to join), in areas such as graphic design, font design, Web design and art direction.
Monitoring every account is an overwhelming job, and Sawhorse only employs three people full-time. But the small team is able to create some intuitive features on each aggregator. The Links tab “pulls what people are talking about,” says Galant. So the newsworthy links on MuckRack display URLs to the New York Times Wire, recently discussed by 16 journalists. And the links on GiantRedCarpet might offer up Sean “Diddy” Combs’ latest YouTube clip.
The Pictures tab on these aggregators also impart some insight into the events behind the Twitter accounts. That tab lists the recent photos tweeted by the pooled feeds, often using TwitPic. The Huffington Post’s Bonnie Culler posted photos of a recent Cher concert, while Tony Hawk uploads pics from his 40th birthday party.
Sawhorse is 90 per cent bootstrapped, and has enjoyed seed funding from private investors Fred Seibert and Marta Wohrle. Galant says they aren’t thinking long term, but just trying to release attractive websites ideal for the Twitter community. Their overhead is quite low, since the content is out there to collect. The aggregation possibilities are endless — company Twitter accounts, green-friendly tweets, recipe-only feeds. Sawhorse has a lot of aggregating to do.
