ClikBall: A Slick New Way to Share Links, From the Creator of Userscripts.org
ClikBall is a handsome looking new application built in part by Jesse Andrews, the man responsible for Greasemonkey script repository Userscripts.org. Described literally, ClikBall is a browser plug-in that allows you to share links and messages with friends, groups, privately, on Twitter and on FriendFeed. The service is in Private Beta, but Userscripts visitors were just welcomed in and the Andrews says ReadWriteWeb readers can join (and follow me) via this link.
That description above doesn't really do the service justice - it's the user experience that makes ClikBall stand out. There's something magical about the grace of the app, and there's clearly a premium put on sharing links that lots of other people will want to click on and share.
All your friends' shared links, comments and your own searchable archive hide down in your browser's status bar. Unless you change the app's settings, new links shared by your friends appear along with their user icon down in the same space. With a click you can expand the thread of shared items, as well.
There's lots of nice little touches here - like the most popular items among your circle of friends, apart from the most universally popular links. The application also installs a custom search engine into your browser, which augments the regular google results with items that you've shared on Clikball.
I'm going to try using this to share my links on Twitter for a little while, instead of doing it through Tweetdeck. There are a few things I'd like to see changed, of course. I'd like to be able to set sharing to Twitter as automatic and I'd like to have a choice in URL shorteners used, at least when posting to Twitter, as I have a strong preference for using the semantic and API friendly Bit.ly. I'd also really like some data export options and there doesn't appear to be any right now. This app could use some more visual elements to it, too. Enjoysthin.gs (our review) could be a good inspiration, and ClikBall for it, too.
One might ask, what's the difference between this and Pierre Omidyar's Ginx, which I gave a scathing review last week. I think there's something about the way that ClikBall seems to integrate with my existing workflow, and uses AJAX in some nice ways, that makes it much more pleasing to use. And, to be frank, ClikBall was built by the guy who made Userscripts.org - one of the best sites on the internet. That's exciting. Credit is also due to Anthony Young, the co-founder of Flock and Ex-flock crew Geoffrey Arone & Raj Paul.
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I saw this article linked in my ClikBall stream and almost laughed out loud - way too self-referential. Have you seen articles about digg, on digg?
I feel compelled to continue my one man mission:
The fact that ClikBall hijacks the search bar (by default!) in Firefox is maybe ok. The fact that it's branded as Google first and ClikBall second is maybe ok.
The fact that they persist this even after you uninstall and remove ClickBall is a nasty habit and an unfriendly consumer practice.
For shame!
Just look at the confusion that arose even during their closed trial period: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=clikball+google
@Fraser, sorry for the confusion - the search is not intentionally being repeatedly hijacked. The overtaking of search after upgrade was just an oversight/mistake, and we're taking measures so that does not happen in the future.
-Anthony
Fraser regarding leaving our search engine when uninstalled:
We and other people have talked with Mozilla about adding uninstall hooks. Right now there is _NO_ way for an extension to register code that gets run on uninstall - and the search engine is not considered part of the extension, so firefox leaves our search engine. We are using the custom google search icon and google custom search branding. (fortunately/unfortunately the are similar to regular google so it can create understanding/confusion)
Mozilla is aware that they have to fix this but considered it low priority when they were asked at the last addon developer meetup.
We've tried to respond on twitter, friendfeed and other places when people ask questions about this.
Keep up the good work and development on this product.
Wow. This is almost EXACTLY like SocialBrose!
Seems like SocialBrowse and ClikBall are similar implementations of a similar idea. It's not a new idea - delicious implemented this as the delicious network, Facebook lets you share and post links, the first home pages people built in the 90s were often lists of links that they thought their friends might like - and it's what I tend to use IM for largely. What I love about ClikBall is the implementation. It seamlessly integrates into my browsing workflow. I haven't played with SocialBrowse yet, but I know the guys behind ClikBall are smart and experienced enough to pull this off in a way that's intuitive to use and can scale.
@Jesse, there are ways to uninstall search engine plugins in Firefox addon uninstall. They just suck. I implemented this once at Songbird:
http://src.songbirdnest.com/source/xref/client/extensions/seeqpod/chrome/content/main.js#143
@Ian: I'm not saying the concept's new, I'm saying that the design, the deployment, the site, and the plugin of Clikball is a complete knockoff from SocialBrowse. Other similiar ones are Browzmi and Reframe It.
I am liking this...
How do I uninstall clikball?
It looks like digg. a little simpler and plain than digg.
and I think they need to work on the design thing too.
www.ucuzu.com
Perhaps you have to be able to see where the development of a Social Networking site can go to see how much more useful cliKball will be than Twitter.
The most awesome thing is the ability to target who sees what you share. Once there are more followers we'll be able to send links only to those who are interested.
I'd love to be able to tag what I share so that cliKball can create content pages targeted to specific niches. Then small businesses could reach the users who are interested in their niche.
If I can use cliKball to post to Twitter the way I currently use Twurl that would cut down on the number of posts I manually share both places.
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