Quick Pitch: Lu.ly brings users’ Facebook and Twitter stream into browsers in real-time.
Genius Idea: Lu.ly is a browser extension for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari (Safari currently in alpha) that lets you see your friends Twitter and Facebook status updates in real-time via scrolling text within the Lu.ly toolbar.
Lu.ly also lets you share web pages on Twitter or Facebook (and automatically shortens the URLs), send direct messages, @replies and RTs.
There are a lot of Twitter add-ons for Firefox but Lu.ly is one of the first that offers support across browsers. Plus, the ability to see Facebook and Twitter updates in one space is really nice.
Lu.ly scrolls new status messages and tweets into your window as they appear. You can click backwards and forwards through your timeline and reply or send a direct message to the user from the toolbar. You can also click on links from tweets or on a user's username and a new tab will open with that link or the user's Twitter page. What we really like about Lu.ly, though, is the ability to use the search bar to search Twitter.
We like seeing useful toolbar plugins, especially when they are supported across browsers. Lu.ly's streamlining of Facebook and Twitter in the browser definitely falls into that category.
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