For Twitter users who need fast and trustworthy help with decisions, Recotype is an engine for real-time recommendations. Simply add #reco to any tweet and Recotype does the rest.

Unlike Twitter alone, Recotype pulls fragmented recommendations together into a single conversation to make it easier to find the right answers.

Recotype also allows its users to save and share their recommendations with a simple 1-click sign in with Twitter. We send each #reco user a shortened link to the collected #reco thread based on the onre.co domain.

Process

We built Recotype because we noticed 2 things:

1. People were using Twitter to provide and request recommendations
2. People were shortening recommendation to ‘reco.’

We wanted to understand the flows of recommendations and word-of-mouth influence. We also wanted to build software that interacted in real-time with Twitter and had the opportunity to extend to additional social media platforms like Facebook.

Recotype is an alpha product running live at Recotype.com.

Results

The alpha version of Recotype that is currently live has proven our initial assumptions that people would use the #reco tag and would get value from the Recotype application.

Our next challenge is to increase the usage, provide better results for users and enable #reco jumping between networks of users like in this example — Need best ever earbuds for running, no over-the-head kind - Suggestions pls. #reco.

It’s early days and we're excited about the prospects.

Expertise

Through the execution of Recotype we’ve developed deep technical and social expertise in Twitter API development and integration.

We have learned about the modes and patterns of real-time social message spread. We’ve also been able to learn about geo-location and location-based information conduits.