(Photo: IFTTT)

The latest victim of the Great Twitter Purge of 2012? IFTTT. We just received an email from CEO Linden Tibbets indicating that "Twitter Triggers" will stop functioning next week. IFTTT (short for "If this, then that") is a glorious, time-saving little startup that lets users set up recipes to link services and apps. (One of the most popular recipes is getting an SMS message if it rains.)

Animated Twitter avatars are also on the growing no-fly list.

The impending change will not affect posting new tweets via IFTTT, but common uses, like pushing tweets to Evernote, will be disabled. The only upside we can see to this disappointing turn of events is that the one recipe we could never get to work properly (only sending favorited tweets with URLS to our Instapaper) will stop cluttering up the app.

Here's the email from Mr. Tibbets:

Dear nitasha,

In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter's data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.

At IFTTT, first and foremost, we want to empower anyone to create connections between literally anything. We've still got a long way to go, and to get there we need to make sure that the types of connections that IFTTT enables are aligned with how the original creators want their tools and services to be used.

We at IFTTT are big Twitter fans and, like yourself, we've gotten a lot of value out of the Recipes that use Twitter Triggers. We're sad to see them go, but remain excited to build features that work within Twitter's new policy. Thank you for your support and for understanding these upcoming changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us atsupport@ifttt.com.

Linden Tibbets
IFTTT CEO

*These Twitter policy changes specifically disallow uploading Twitter Content to a "cloud based service" (Section 4Ahttps://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms) and include stricter enforcement of the Developer Display Requirements (https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-requirements).

Well, our housekeeping just got easier. (Screencap)

Currently sitting atop the Hacker News homepage: IFTTT, the service that effectively lets you program the Internet to suit your needs, just announced a couple of new features. And if you are a fan of the connected home, then you had better brace yourself, because IFTTT just started integrating with its first real hardware company.

First off, the service can now integrate with two types of WeMo devices, the Switch and the Motion, both of which allow users to control home electronics remotely. The former would allow you to, let's say, program your bedside lamp to switch on at sunset, or your coffee maker to startup at sunrise. Using the latter, you can apparently program an alert that tells you when to clean the litterbox, which is just the kind of hardware innovation us Internet cat ladies like to see.

They also announced QuickTriggers, which (as one might expect from the name) spring into effect immediately upon detecting relevant new information. These faster alerts are available on email, SMS, phone, Google talk, and the WeMo devices.

Besides the additional features, IFTTT also did a bit of sprucing up about the place, including a brand-new logo. Most importantly, the service has streamlined its mystifying language, unifying the various compenents under a cooking metaphor: Tasks are now recipes; add-ins are now ingredients.

Just be sure not to trigger any rogue pufferfish.

IFTTT allows users to create tasks so that if something happens, the service will do something else. So you could set an IFTTT to get an email when it rains, or receive an alert whenever someone specific tweets. The bitly integration makes it possible to automatically tweet any link you shorten (that is, provided you've figured out how to shorten links on the new bitly).

Already popular: saving starred Google Reader items as private Bitmarks and sharing Bitmarks on Tumblr. By God, you will learn to use Bitmarks and, what's more, you will learn to love and appreciate them.

Only tangentially related: We kinda miss the hapless-looking old puffer fish. Who is this smiley new guy?

UPDATED: Turns out there's a kink worth mentioning. This reporter's Twitter just spat out a Bitmark for a National Geographic article regarding puffer fish. Presumably, this is the sample Bitmark awaiting every new bitly user, and when we created our IFTTT task to test all the aforementioned processes, out popped the puffer, thereby inspiring at least one fellow Betabeat writer to burst out laughing at our sudden, random taste for nature reporting.

Imagine the possibilities

According to its portfolio page, Chelsea based innovation lab betaworks has invested in IFTTT (If This Then That), a service that lets users program the web to work for them.

The investment was first noticed by Marshall Kirkpatrick with the help of the NeuVC bot.

The service takes the basic logic of computer programming and applies it to the numerous web apps people rely on every day.

So for example, I could set IFTTT to update me with a Tweet every time a certain VC posts an Instagram after 10pm on a weekday (good way to keep tabs on the dealflow). 

Right now the service has 45 channels including foursquare, instapaper, readability and tumblr. For a company like betaworks, which prides itself on investing and building for the real time web, IFTTT present an interesting opportunity to see how these services can be leveraged against one another.

Some of the most popular recipes (strings of action) on IFTTT are based around exporting data from Facebook. Anil Dash has written that its important users preserve and protect the memories (data) they are posting to social networks, as many seemingly robust sites have quickly failed, taking users photos and text with them (RIP Friendster).

So it makes sens that the most popular recipe is an IFTTT that saves a Facebook photo to your Dropbox as soon as you are tagged. For the very popular among us, there is an IFTTT that greets new Twitter followers with an automatic response.  And for those Americans out of work, there is a recipe that pings you with an email as soon as a new gig shows up on Craigslist.

Anyone make a cool IFTTT they want to share? Hit us in the comments.