At Twibes, our goal is to make it easy to participate in the conversations you care about. Our latest addition is the ability to post to your twibe (and receive twibe Tweets) from your Instant Messenger client. The exciting thing about this is that it means you can now connect to your Twibe in real time from a desktop application, or even from your Blackberry or iPhone.

How do I use it?

To get in, add YOURTWIBENAME @twitter-sync.appspotchat.com as an IM contact. So, if your twibe is called “Photography” add “photography@twitter-sync.appspotchat.com”. Then, open a conversation with that contact and type ‘hi’. If the email address you using for IM is different than the one you have on file with Twibes, you’ll get a link to click to add that email address to your twibes account.

What Applications work with Twibes IM?

Your instant messenger program must support connecting to Google Talk accounts. We’ve tested these and verified that they work:

• Adium (Mac)
• iChat (Mac)
• GMail (Web)
• Google Apps (Web)
• Google Talk (Windows Desktop and Blackberry)
• Digsby (Windows)
• Pidgin (Windows)
• Trillian (iPhone)
• MSN Messenger: Not supported, contact does not appear online

What are the commands?

There are a few easy to use commands that the twibes IM bot understands. Just type one of these words:

• hi – the bot will respond to verify that it is ready for your messages
• help – will list these messages
• who – will show you who else was recently online. You can also use “who @somebody” to get more information about a person
• invite – use “invite somebody@somewhere.com” to send them an email and invite them to the twibe
• tweet on – send message to Twitter via Twibes
• tweet off – stop sending messages to twitter (they still go to Twibes)
• bye – this tells twibes to stop sending you messages. Otherwise, when you log in you may get twibe messages from when you weren’t there.

Please send log any feedback or comments you have on the Twibes feedback page, and contact adam@twibes.com if you have any problems.