Letting people know what music you are listening to has long been a staple of the web. The blogging platform LiveJournal has long had the “listening to” field, instant messaging clients like iChat and Google Talk added the ability to update your status based on the song you were listening to a few years ago, and now people are using Twitter to send our their music selections. Blip.fm is the best for this so far, but a new challenger rises in Dora.
Dora is actually an API mashup of three popular web services: the music streaming service Pandora, the micro-messaging service Twitter and the URL-shortening service Bit.ly. When you load Dora, you may think it’s just Pandora, but at the bottom of the page is the Dora overlay which provides you with an easy way to tweet out what you’re listening to. Before you do this, you must authenticate yourself on Twitter, but that gives you the ability to send a tweet out with the title of the song you are listening to (and a message in the remaining characters) with one click. There is also an option to append a link to the song shortened using Bit.ly.
Unfortunately, there are a couple weaknesses with Dora. First, before you can tweet, it authenticates your Twitter information over the OAuth protocol. This is nice as it’s a secure way to send information, but it adds a step to the tweeting out process. A lot of users are likely already signed into Twitter in their web browser, and could pass the song information that way. But the OAuth authentication wouldn’t be a bad way to go if Dora didn’t make you authenticate each time you revisit the site. That’s just annoying.
Another problem is that links Dora sends out to Twitter, link back to Pandora. The problem with that is that Pandora doesn’t allow you to access full versions of individual songs anytime you want to. Instead, it takes you to a page on Pandora for the song and gives you the option to preview it. Sure, you could create a new Pandora stations around this song, and it may pop up first, but that’s more complicated than it should be. Pandora has to do this because the rules of Internet radio streaming prohibit users from picking the individual songs they want to hear.
But Blip.fm, isn’t technically a Internet radio service, so it doesn’t have to adhere to such rules. And, as such, when you tweet out a song from Blip.fm, anyone can click on the link and immediately start listening to the song as well. Blip.fm also offers its own way to sign-in to Twitter without using OAuth. You have to give Blip.fm you Twitter name and password, but it’s more seamless. Another service in this space is Twt.fm. It’s similar to Blip.fm, but uses imeem’s catalog of music to find and tweet songs out.
If you’re addicted to Pandora, or really just want to share the titles of songs you are listening to, Dora is a nice solution. But if you want others to subject others to your musical tastes, Blip.fm is still the way to go. At least until it gets big enough to raise the ire of the record industry.
Interesting, I love to listen to Pandora on my commute to work. Pandora has a great recommendation engine that really works. Keep up the good work Pandora.
yay web 2.0. pandora worth $1 billion, dora worth $500 milliion, and twitter worth $15 billion
I am puzzled by you considering oAuth a weakness. Perhaps it’s not implemented properly, but in the long run it is a very strong strength attribute in my book.
Could you update the article as to whether bit.ly API key is supported? I am sure I am not the only one who cares if friends actually try the suggestions.
backly don’t like twitter,twitter can use in nba
Where is the http://twt.fm mention?
274k followers strong and trending every monday re: #musicmonday
http://search.t...search?q=twt.fm
I personally think what Dora is doing is rad, and not forcing someone to create a new login to use a Twitter related service is imo THE only way a service like this should be presented.
Yeah, I’ll add twt.fm in there.
Thanks for the quick response!
Dora: Because copy and paste is just too darn hard.
the recession ended http://iamned.com/blog/ long live Silicon Valley and web 2.0 ppl need to stop complaining about job loss and such
Is this like jamWee.com? I received a private beta invite form them a few days ago. It looks pretty cool.
I’ve been running a service for about 8 months called lastfmlovetweet that links twitter, bitly, and lastfm. Every track you love on lastfm generates a tweet that includes a link to lastfm and optionally to amazon. Over 100,000 tweets generated, see for yourself!
http://search.t...3lastfm+%23love
Twitter this. Twitter that. Twitter there. Twitter here. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
STOP this bullsh!t dude.
Could agree with Sal more. Please, please, stop the Twitter related posting. TechTwit is becoming a joke, and MG in particular.
bit.ly ???
Merges and integrations are a lot of fun and usually very useful, but in this case, I don’t think so. Who cares what you are listening to? Unless you are a DJ whose musical taste is of utmost interest to others, I suspect most of your followers will be pretty annoyed by your Dora tweets.
post on blip.fm, twt.fm and Dora.fm today :
http://www.crow...parlor-mob.html
It seems like the Twitter model is being applied to everything now.
only thing i’m worried about is how IRC was not mentioned in the introduction. all i had to do was hit F9…
I’m all for simplicity, but If this really became game-changing, what would stop pandora from doing the same thing?
How much more?
too bad pandora is not international… looks cool though.
Pandora is great search engine it is very fast and good communicator I recommend Pandora web service
eh…I’ll stick with blip.fm
Addictive!
These are three services I use on a daily basis, so I’ll have to check out the mashup Dora made and see if it really adds value.
“Pandora has to do this because the rules of Internet radio streaming prohibit users from picking the individual songs they want to hear.”
If you have a non-interactive or limited interactive service, which is what Pandora is. The rules don’t prohibit it; it just costs much more to run that kind of business, as this site has covered in the past.
Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S.
.. moving on to blip.fm
Another alternative is to use FriendFeed. FriendFeed will aggregate anytime you click the BookMark button on an Artist/Song page while it is playing.
I have my FriendFeed posting to my Twitter, and also my Facebook, so in essence, when I just hit BookMark it Tweets for me.
@AnthonyRusso on Twitter
Perhaps it’s not implemented properly, but in the long run it is a very strong strength attribute in my book.
If you have an interactive service or interactive Limited, is what is Pandora. The rules do not prohibit it, it’s simply more to operate its business, because this site has been made in the past.