A Little Drive

Brizzly+ shutting down

2023-02-08T00:00:00Z

Due to changes in the way Twitter operates its developer tools, Brizzly+ is shutting down.

Brizzy+ uses a special connection to Twitter called the Twitter API to access your tweets on Twitter. Twitter tweeted last week that on Feb 9th, 2023, their ahem new management, decided to discontinue free API access. The price increases are steep, and the new rules are not friendly to small businesses like Brizzly.

How will it impact you?

Since we can no longer display, like, delete, or send tweets without this connection, Brizzly+ will be shutting down. If you have been using Brizzly+ thank you for your support.

There is no action required as far as Brizzly is concerned. Brizzly.com will be redirecting to Brizzly Zero soon and we will delete all account data.

If you want to keep up with new products of ours in the future, please subscribe to our newsletter or subscribe to this blog's feed.

If you have recently paid, we will issue a refund thru Stripe by the end of the month unless we hear otherwise. It's a bit of a pain. If you paid annually, I will do my best to prorate you for the time used by March.

What should you do?

For your own safety, you can visit Twitter and under Settings visit:

Security Account Access > Apps and Sessions > Connected Apps

...and revoke access to Brizzly.com (and any other apps you don’t use anymore or will be impacted by this change too).

If you are looking for a way to pass the time, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out our own ridiculous Brizzly Zero, where you send posts into the ether. If you must use a social network, Mastodon is fun too.

Is this the end?

This is not the end of Brizzly, just the end of Brizzly+. It began as a joke about "editing tweets" and barely made it out the door at the beginning of the pandemic. Great timing.

However, it's especially sad for me that Twitter has benefited from Brizzly's existence for so long in showing the way forward with features like incorporated tweet editing, timed deletion, and in the original version of Brizzly from 2009, how to unfurl links and images and more. It's short-sighted and sad that they would do this to their own users.

Thank you most of all for using one of the world's silliest web services to delete your tweets. We're sorry that Brizzy+ is shutting down this way, but we're glad you were a part of it. Reach out if you need anything or have further questions.

The closest thing to an Edit Button for Twitter: Announcing Brizzly+

2020-03-10T00:00:00Z

People have long clamored for an Edit button for Twitter, however Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, recently squashed all hope of adding one. That didn't sit well with us, long-time Twitter fans, so today we're announcing Brizzly+.

Brizzly+ brings Undo, Redo, Auto-deletion, Custom prompts and more to Twitter.

If you're like us, you make mistakes on Twitter. A survey of Twitter users found that often we catch mistakes as soon they are sent. When you add your Twitter account to Brizzly, you'll see an Undo send button on all tweets sent through Brizzly+. Right now you can choose between no delay, 10-seconds or up to 10-minutes of time where you can hit Undo.

Want to save the good tweets though? Use our Fave to Save feature. After turning on Auto-delete, we give you the option to save your tweets that meet a certain threshold of Likes. Set it to any amount of Likes and the one's that meet the bar will be kept.

Auto-delete brings the fun of disappearing stories to Twitter. If you want to turn this feature on, select from 24 hours, 1 week or 1 month. We'll monitor your tweets, whether made on Brizzly or not and delete them.

Brizzly+ is a subscription service with plans starting at $2.49 a month billed monthly or $29.99 billed annually, though we have a free trial for the first two-weeks. Start your two-week free trial now. You're always welcome to use our social-free version, Brizzly Zero too.

You can read more about Brizzy+ at brizzly.com or if you have further questions we have an FAQ.

Brizzly re-launch press

2018-10-25T00:00:00Z

I bought Brizzly.com back from Aol/Verizon back in late 2017. I didn't know what I was going to do with it so I let it sit for a while. I certainly didn't expect any press coverage when I launched it as an antidote to hanging out on social sites all day getting into Twitter fights. However, that's exactly what happened and boy did it ever.

It all started with this simple tweet announcing the two-page site I had whipped up over a day and a half.

Within minutes, Techcrunch reached out for a comment and it felt just old times.

Techcrunch, Slate (and Slate France) wrote about it as well as a slew of other outlets. Now Brizzly has a contingent of frequent users in France. C’est la vie, Brizzly!

One of my favorites by far is the morning I woke up to find out Brizzly had made it onto Breakfast Television Toronto. They did a full two-minute segment on Brizzly. Hello Toronto!

I almost feel badly that Brizzly doesn't do much more than throw your tweets directly away. Maybe Brizzly will do something else one-day.

Hibernation is over

2018-08-21T00:00:00Z

I bought Brizzly back from Aol/Oath. For now, I figured we could all take a deep breath and remember the good times we've had on social media without making things worse. Silly? Maybe, but one day there will be more t-shirts depicting everyone's favorite internet bear or even a new service.

A Little History

Brizzly was launched by Thing Labs in 2009. Thing Labs was a group of (mostly) Google Reader veterans with visions of a new "social media reader". Brizzly became a popular way for Twitter and Facebook users to view their timelines with pioneering features such as in-line photos and videos, threaded direct messages, URL shortening, lists, a guide to trends with explanations, group chats and more. The Brizzly branding was described by, then Techcrunch writer, M.G. Siegler as "...a killer logo of what looks to be a bear wearing a dead Twitter bird’s skin". No birds were actually harmed.

It was great fun but we sold the company in September 2010 to join Aol in their efforts to revitalize AIM. Brizzly was shuttered in the spring of 2012 after AIM became reprioritized inside of Aol.