Sometimes there are tweets that are so witty, so interesting or so awesome that you have to save them for posterity. For tweets like these, the most obvious action to take is simply to click the little star icon at the end of the tweet to save it to your Favorites.

But, with the thousands of tweets feeding your Twitter stream each day and the hundreds of those that are worth remembering, your Favorites section can get very unwieldy very quickly. Right now, there’s no convenient way to sort through your Favorites. Eventually, all those tweets worth remembering are left forgotten in yet another endless stream of information. Boo.

Did you know, though, that you could use Smub to manage and sort your Twitter Favorites? For reals! Since Smub lets you save and manage any URL, you can just smub the individual URLs of your favorites tweets and add them to your Smub account, where you can customize their shortcuts and add tags. When you come back later to find that forgotten Favorite, all you have to do is a quick search by tag, date added or name. You can even select a smubbed favorite to retweet, email or share on any of your favorite social networking sites, right from your Smub account.

Anywho, just wanted to share with you yet another way to use Smub with Twitter! Hope you might find it useful!

In an effort to help iPhone users post really really short links to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, and more, we’ve reconfigured our URL structure. Now, when you simply want to post a link, you’ll get a randomly generated Smub, like this:

Smub

These shorter URLs are meant to help with Twitter posts, especially. If you choose to bookmark, or save, a Smub, it’ll continue to pull a short string of characters to help you remember the bookmark.

Of course, if you want to name your URLs, simply sign up for a Smub account, and you can name every link you save or share!

We wanted to give you the flexibility of choice. Let us know what you think!

Smub users are now experiencing a brand new interface when they type smub.it/ to the left of the http:// in their browsers, and they love it. I’ve heard, “wow, that’s cool…” from loyal Smubbers who’ve Smubbed a page since yesterday. Our new version of Smub further enhances the experience our web users have always had - by adding sharing options and making bookmarking even easier.

Smub's New Web Interface

Built for iPhone Bookmarking

The Smub experience now looks a lot like an iPhone, and it’s no wonder. We’re the first to provide iPhone users the capability to bookmark or share any link from an iPhone, finally making mobile bookmarking a reality.

And the Smub experience is seamless from web browswe to the new iPhone interface:

Smub on the iPhone

In research we completed earlier this winter, we found that iPhone users are interested in, and frustrated by, sharing - or just plain saving - links from their iPhones. So we’ve answered those needs with our new capabilities in this release.

Counting click-thru’s, using the Smub Toolbar, creating branded URLs and more are still features we support in the new Smub. We’ll look forward to exploring those capabilities with you in the coming weeks and months!

Meanwhile, check out the brand new world Smub is opening to iPhone users… The best part? Smub remains free to register and use.

I was delighted yesterday to make my first Smub and find that our engineering team had unveiled one of my favorite new features - counting “hits.”

Smub counts click-thrus as"hits"

As you can see in the right-hand column, you can track the number of clicks on your Smubs whether you share them in email, via Facebook, Twitter, text them, or read them over the phone.

And, in addition to being able to count the hits, you can sort by number of hits (or by date, alphabetically, or by tag):

Smub will sort number of hits

So at the simplest level, you’ll be able to see which Smubs are your most popular. And you can even test whether Smubs in Twitter are more clicked on than Smubs on your Facebook page. Or whether a Smub in an email worked to get people clicking…

Which of your Smubs are the most viral? Now you’ll know - and you just might be surprised!

If we care to be connected online, few of us are reliant on one connection to the web any more. With the ubiquity of smartphones, the transportability of laptops and UMPCs, and the vital resources kept our desktops in homes and work; it can seem impossible to keep (much less share) the information that captures our attention - at a particular moment in time - in one simple, secure, personal space for recall later, from any connection.

“I don’t use my laptop very much any more, I’m not sure I can remember how to get to that page from here…”

“I can’t access any of my personal sites at work, they’re blocked. I’ll have to get it to you when I’m home.”

“Doggone it, I’m at the store, and I don’t have the product number of the very thing I came here for, it’s on my home PC.”

Each time I’ve said or heard that, I’m watching a stall play out. Wait. Wait. Wait. Tick, Tick, Tick… and often, by the time we get to the right connection to continue the action or communication, (if you’re like me) we’ve forgotten it.

Sometimes Personal is Personal

I keep “bookmarks” on every machine I use. And there’s certain information I have on my work PC that I wouldn’t trust having on my iPhone, in case it gets lost. And not everyone is comfortable having their bookmarks displayed - for all to see - on the social bookmarking sites, nor should they be.

But there have been many times I needed access to an email account for a client, when not at my desk.

“Was it http://, or https:// or was it webmail.something….?”

That guessing game takes up a ton of time.

And sometimes we want to share a link of an apartment we’re looking at on Craigslist with just a small circle of folks - without exposing the world to exactly where we are thinking of moving…

How is it that as technology offers simpler access to information online, we seem to lose simplicity itself?

We think we have a pretty simple response in Smub: any Smub can be recalled from any browser.

Period.

Whether you Smub a page on your iPhone, your laptop, your mom’s desktop or any one of your friend’s, you can find it again in your personal Smub bookmarks. Behind your own password, these Smubs can easily be searched by tag, date, or name.

My bookmarks are all available from my iPhone

I’m connected to the information that’s important to me from any place at any time. It’s just that simple.

Most people ‘get’ the notion of grabbing a URL and renaming it (which is the new aha! we’re able to provide in the realm of shrinking links) to a personally memorable link. The simultaneous “save” (to a personal bookmark page) is a bonus - especially for those of us who can’t always remember exactly what we’ve named or where we’ve stored something.

When you register for a Smub account, you’re automatically saving (or bookmarking) your Smubs in a private area on Smub’s server. That gives you several cool advantages:

• You can gain access to your Smubs from any browser. So when you’re visiting mom and dad for Thanksgiving, you can log in from the ancient 386 that’s humming under the desk, keeping your dad’s legs toasty as he works around the 65 pound monitor (look! an old CRT!) on top of his desk. (That is, if the operating system supports Firefox 2 or 3, and/or IE 6,7 or 8.)
• It’s a private bookmark page, so you can save not only public Smubs, but you can store your personal pages online (for access from mom and dad’s, or anywhere you’re connected to a browser) - I have a “bank” and plenty of email account/Baseline account Smubs already. What’s great about that is that I can truly be bookmark free on my iPhone (in case I lose it) and still have access to my personal pages when I’m on the road.
• You can sort your Smubs by tag, by date, or alphabetically, so it’s easy to find a needle in a haystack even when you become a prolific “Smubber.” (Believe me, I’ve come to appreciate that capability for sure.)

As much as I can get lost in the joy of personalizing and sharing links, and sharing Smubs through the toolbar, I’ve found great solace in relying on Smub to save and sort my links, too.

And in helping me be truly, truly mobile, yet connected.

Bookmarked Smubs are easily searched, sorted

We’re launching our blog and our Smub beta simultaneously (get used to that concept from us) today, and I thought I’d give a little overview as to how easily Smub works, to tickle the imagination.

In the upcoming the days, weeks and months, we’ll share stories of Smub, gather feedback from Smub users and generally be the fast track to the development and product teams here in Redwood City. But for now, we’re working on some introductory stuff to get everyone grounded in Smub.

Who’s Writing This Blog?

I’m Janet Johnson, and I’m extremely fortunate to work for Smub in managing our social media interactions. I’ve been in technology marketing for 24 years, and Smub is one of those tools that’s come along that has really changed the way I think about sharing information. (I wrote about that today on my personal blog, over here.) I’ll be Twittering about Smub, so please join us there. It’s so much more fun to tweet when there are people listening, right?

What is Smub?

Smub is a tool that helps people communicate information from the web to other people, in the easiest possible ways. Most people, when I’ve explained it to them, think “Oh, a link shrinking tool,” and immediately put it in that box in their brains, nicely filed away.

But Smub is much more than that. It allows you to capture any link (from any browser window - even on a smartphone, which is very, very cool) and simultaneously personalize it, bookmark it and easily share it with folks; you can easily say a smub, write it on a napkin, email, text, IM, and post it to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. We like to think of Smub as a universal URL sharing and saving tool.

How Smub Works:

Once you register for your free Smub account, you can simply type Smub.it/ to the left of the http:// on any browser window – even on your iPhone, Blackberry or smartphone – and make a Smub.

A note about registering - choose a short, memorable Smub name, especially if you use Twitter. It’s what makes your Smubs personal. My Smubs are “Janet” and “jlj” so my Smubs come out short and sweet when I Tweet.

Smubs are contextual in Twitter

Name your Smub, tag it if you want to, (you can search all your bookmarked Smubs by tag, date, or alphabetically) and choose whether you want it shared or private. For example, I share lots of Smubs, but I set up my own “Janet/bank” Smub to get to my online bank page, and made that private.

Making a Smub is simple, tag and bookmark at the same time.

Share your Smub. We’ve set it up so it’s easy to share via email, or on your Facebook, MySpace or Twitter accounts directly from your Smub bookmark page or the sharing window that will open each time you create a shareable Smub.

Sharing Smubs is automatic in email, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

But one of the coolest thing about Smubs is how you can say them to share them. I can be on the phone with Todd, for example, and can say, “Check out Meryl’s blog post on Smub at “Janet/merylpost” and he has all the information he needs to get there.

The more you use Smub, the more you find uses for it. We’ll talk more about those soon. Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to the optional, but very handy Smub address bar.

Meanwhile, thanks for dropping by. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. We especially welcome your feedback. We’re in beta, so fire away!