Certain companies understand how to gain a fan base. OutTwit is one of those companies. I've been using OutTwit for a few weeks now and when I started using it, I thought using rules would be a good way to sort tweets - I wanted to sort news tweets from individual tweets. That didn't end up working, so when I saw an option to send some feedback, I did. I never really expected to hear anything back, but imagine my surprise when yesterday, I received the following email:

Hi Joel,

How's OutTwit working for you?

Just a quick note to let you know that we have released a new version, which has a feature you requested - an ability to sort messages in per-sender folders. It doesn't let you build arbitrary rules, it's all or nothing right now, but it's a start :) http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/

This is probably the best kind of marketing for a piece of software. Not only did they send me an email about a new release, but it's a personal message - it was obviously custom written for me. It includes details about my specific request - to be able to use rules against incoming tweets.

While it's not exactly what I asked for, this new feature actually completely satisfies my needs. By having the separate folders, I can build search folders that separate out mainstream tweets from individual tweets, so I'm pretty excited about the new release.

One of the other new features is kind of subtle. I didn't notice it right away, but when you are on a particular message, the user's twitter id is already filled in:

Click through to see a larger image if you can't see it, but in the OutTwit box, @davewiner is already filled in. Nice, simple feature, but really, really useful.

By the way, the other feature I asked for didn't make it - Jaiku support.

Tags: Twitter | OutTwit | Jaiku