Keeping all your social media sites updated can feel like a lot of work sometimes. Services like Pixelpipe or Ping.fm allow you to quickly post messages or media files to various services from one central location, but sometimes you need a more flexible and granular approach. This is where Tarpipe, a Portuguese startup, comes in. Tarpipe allows you to develop complex workflows for publishing content to multiple social media sites through an intuitive, Yahoo Pipes-like interface.
The central hub for your work on Tarpipe is the 'workflows' tab, which looks a lot like the interface for Yahoo Pipes. The workflow tab allows you to control how, where, and what part of your data will be published. You can, for example, set up Tarpipe to receive an email, turn the title into a Twitter and Plurk post, upload an email attachment to Flickr or PhotoBucket, and then add the URL of that picture to your Twitter message as well, while also saving a copy of your picture on Evernote at the same time. All of this is done through a simple drag-and-drop interface that pretty much explains itself once you start using it.
Among the services currently supported by Tarpipe are Flickr, PhotoBucket, Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, FriendFeed, TinyURL, and Tumblr. Tarpipe also just announced its integration with Evernote, which allows you to use Evernote's OCR features to automatically tag pictures.
Most of Tarpipe's competitors support a wider range of third-party services, but chances are that Tarpipe will continue adding more services over time.
Mac users can also make use of Dropipe, a small OSX droplet that connects to Tarpipe and lets you upload pictures directly to the service from your desktop.
Tarpipe is also working on a new feature which will let users publish content on multiple social media sites through the use of a simple form, but without the ability to customize these workflows.
Tarpipe is a great alternative to services like Ping.fm or PixelPipe, especially if you want to customize the flow of your data more granularly. Developers can make use of an extensive API, and, as a bonus, Tarpipe also supports OpenID, OAuth, and microformats.
Use case: automatically tag a screenshot using Evernote from Bruno Pedro on Vimeo.
Comments
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Hi Frederic,
Thanks for this great post about tarpipe and its integration with Evernote. Evernote is the ideal service for this kind of integration because it provides a great value on its output -- image recognition information.
We're working around the clock to add more connections to popular third-party services, extending your publishing possibilities.
Bruno Pedro
tarpipe.com
Posted by: Bruno Pedro | November 10, 2008 1:28 PM
This looks awesome! Wonder what else could be Pipes like this? I do wonder whether it's at all excessive, I know all my stuff ends up in FriendFeed anyway, but it sure is cool!
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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November 10, 2008 2:54 PM
It's nice to see innovation like this come out of places like Portugal, and not just be limited to the U.S.
Posted by: weight loss guy | November 11, 2008 9:47 AM
Great service! I wonder just how it measures up to Ping.fm though. Might be interesting to see a direct comparison or review comparing both.
Posted by: Everything Art and Design | November 13, 2008 6:25 AM
@Everything Art - these services are pretty different, in that tarpipes gives you a lot more flexibility to manipulate your posts depending on where you want to post them. But doing a roundup of these different providers might be a good idea, with pixelpipe, tarpipe, ping.fm and a few others now joining the fray.
Posted by: Frederic Lardinois
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November 13, 2008 12:32 PM
Heck,
I don't want Tarpipe and Ping.fm to compete. I need/want them both!
Surely they can co-exist somehow??
If ping.fm could be present as a Tarpipe input connector thingy, I'd be delighted :)
-Alister
Posted by: Alister Cameron
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November 17, 2008 6:11 PM
I'm interested in also being up to do a single login and submit something to various social media sites I use (e.g.: redit, digg, stumbleupon).
It looks like tarpipe might get me there but not today. Is there anything like this?
Posted by: simonbaptist | November 20, 2008 2:11 PM