It would be this Facebook app. I’m not on Facebook so I had to borrow my wife’s account to test drive this new app called Shoutworthy that’s getting a bit of buzz. Shoutworthy is still in beta but I managed to get an invitation and if you’re shouted, you will also get an invitation but I’m getting ahead of myself. Shoutworthy takes the recommendation system of LinkedIn, you a professional recommending another person for quality work, and mixes it with Twitter’s messaging system, 140-character, rapid-fire messages. Instead of the lengthy, referral-quality recommendations you might get on LinkedIn, Shoutworthy provides quick shout-outs that can be a lot easier to receive and act like pats on the back.
First off, Shoutworthy is a Facebook app. It’s quite useless without a Facebook account or if you won’t allow the app access to your data. It asks for a lot of access so you should give it some serious consideration.
If you decide to allow the app, you’ll be on your way to signing up at Shoutworthy.com. Fill out what you want to and hit the ‘Done’! button.
This will land you on the main Shoutworthy page, which lists recent Shouts and tags for the most frequently mentioned professions.
They really want to get us to give somebody a shout out, so why don’t we oblige them. You can choose from any of your Facebook friends and it will help autocomplete the field. You can also enter their profession or a particular skill or talent. Upon clicking on the name, a field drops down that also allows you to send a 140 message message along with your shout out.
Once you fill it out and hit the ‘Send Shout Out’ button, it will go through the status messages to post your message. By default it will also shout to Facebook and Twitter as well as the Shoutworthy site. If you’re looking to delete the messages that are showing up on your wall, you might be able to delete one that shows up on your wall if you have Twitter integration on and you’ll find the Facebook post on the other person’s wall to remove it.
Once shouted, you’ll see a simple message on your Twitter account based on your message with a link-back URL to the Shoutworthy posting. Assuming you also allow Shoutworthy OAuth access to your Twitter, you message might look like this:
The shortened URL takes you to the Shoutworthy page for this posting:
You can also use the Shoutworthy site to find individuals you’d want to work with by using the search box at the top for different careers.
If this is your sort of thing, you can get access to Shoutworthy by receiving a shoutout or by requesting an invitation on Shoutworthy.com. For me, I don’t have a Facebook account so it’s an easy decision. Even if I did have an account on FB still, I’m not a big fan of apps that need so much access to the data in my account. If you’re looking for a fast recommendation engine, try Shoutworthy.