startupi

Remember TweetMeme? It is a webservice that blends search for links in tweets (Twitter posts), metrics, and a widget to add to sites and blogs. Great for facilitating and following the socialization of links. In fact, we’ve added it to the English version of Startupi. Very good, but it doesn’t map content in Portuguese.

If you install the TweetMeme button on your Portuguese blog and people click on it to retweet the title and link of the post, the system just marks it at zero, as if nothing was retweeting. But to the joy of the (micro)blogosphere in Brazil, there is now BuzzVolume, which does all this specifically for Portuguese content!

Yes, it’s the little button up on the right of the post, in the Portuguese version of Startupi — that’s BuzzVolume! Created by our developer friends Maurício Maia and Dirceu Pauka, the tool is being adopted (and raved about) by Brazilian blogs; it also offers a homepage with a list of links for portuguse content that has been retweeted.

“BuzzVolume aggregates the most popular Portuguese language Twitter links. You can the discover the articles, photos and videos that people like you are sharing and discussing most,” explains the website. The name of the site “Top Posts on Twitter” is also the slogan of the service. The service offers various options (you can install the retweet button in email, blogs, websites or RSS) and it is easy to implement (just check out the site).

Service born from an unfulfilled demand: filtering good content

I interviewed Maurício, who explained the growth and circumstances around BuzzVolume. “I’d been thinking about this service for some time, but didn’t implement it. After a while some similar tools were launched, but not ones that completely fulfilled the need. So I built BuzzVolume. Basically, I wanted to filter good content on Twitter. There is a lot of great content being generated, but lots of noise, too.

“I developed the prototype and it was evolving step by step; since Dirceu and I had complementary technical knowledge it was natural for him to get involved and help bring continuity to the project. We are both developers and friends who have known each other since working on another big Brazilian startup, boo-box.

“I had developed the habit of going to Twitter before checking the RSS reader. It was a question of seeing real-time results - you wake up and know what’s happening right now. Today I go to BuzzVolume first. ;)”

And about the future: “BuzzVolume will be big, profitable and independent. We are going to start working on advertising and metrics, but in the mid to long term we have other plans which we won’t reveal now.” To keep up with their plans, follow them on Twitter.

Here’s an interesting bit of research showing Portuguese is the second most used language on Twitter: http://migre.me/7gMO (via @Maurício and @WebEcology).