Tumbl.in lets users stumble Twitter links

Dubbed the "StumbleUpon for Twitter," Tumbl.in creates a spontaneous but personal surfing experience

If you like the spontaneity of StumbleUpon and the personalization afforded by Twitter, you will love Tumbl.in.

The just-launched service lets one “stumble” or “tumble” through links shared by users in their Twitter timeline, favorites, or lists.

A project of UCSC student Suchit Agarwal and Blippy engineer Rahul Thathoo, Tumbl.in may not be the first of its kind (see: FriendShuffle), but it’s an elegant solution to the problem of a noisy Twitter stream. Instead of scrolling through and reading every tweet to find something interesting, the user can just sit back and let Tumbl.in do the work.

“The idea is to get completely out of the way of a user,” said Agarwal, “and create a non-intrusive browsing experience while providing the user enough context (show them the tweet, for example).”

The Tumbl.in site is pretty spartan, but the user should only have to see it once. After connecting the site to one’s own Twitter account, the service lets the user decide what sources he or she wants Tumbl.in to draw links from. The only options are the timeline, favorites, and individual lists and there seems to be no limit to how many the user can choose from.

Very much in an early development stage, Tumbl.in still feels rough around the edges. For example, after connecting my Twitter account and selecting where I wanted Tumbl.in to pull links from, I arrived at my first page, a blog article about new technology. When I clicked Tumbl.in to continue on, however, I was brought to the home page for Jam Legend, an online guitar game site that somehow made the Tumbl.in toolbar disappear. Trying to click back proved futile; the same page just reloaded.

To be fair, typing “tumbl.in” in the URL bar immediately brought me to a new destination with the toolbar restored.

Once these bugs get fixed, Tumbl.in could end up being as popular as StumbleUpon, one of the most used social bookmarking sites.

Tumbl.in is working on an iPad app to match its Web service.