Here is an application I find quite curious (found via Everything Twitter). Tweetstalk lets you follow people on Twitter without them knowing that you are following their updates. I guess what the system does is fetch the RSS stream of the person you want to stalk, and re-integrates it in your friends’ stream.
The most important question about Tweetstalk is: What is it for? Why wouldn’t we want to let others know you are following them. Shyness? Shameless stalking? I find it really not aligned with Twitter’s philosophy of transparency. But that’s just me, and as the dev team say on its homepage:
We actually have a three phase roadmap for TweetStalk, but that may change with user feedback. I won’t tell you exactly what we plan, but it does involve better integration with the Twitter UI and creating other ways to make TweetStalk work (instead of having to use a Firefox addon). Other than that, we don’t have any plans to rule the world with this app. It’s just for fun. Enjoy!
Fair enough, moving on… Tweetstalk is a Firefox add-on. Simply download it, and everytime you will check somebody’s profile from Twitter, this stalk button will appear (as seen above).
There you go, simplicity at its best. If anyone has any idea on why stalking is better than following, please do share with us!