For All You Twitterers: We Launched Tweetwasters.com Today
December 12, 2008 | Barry Wise | News, Web Design
18 Comments
Whew, it’s been a hectic morning! Sugarrae, Streko, Reese and I have been working together to launch Tweetwasters.com, and we just shipped it out the door a few hours ago. It’s a pretty simple application – it just polls the Twitter API to count how many status updates (ugh, do I have to call them “Tweets”?) you’ve posted to Twitter. Then we do some high-end mathematical computations to figure out just how much time you’ve wasted on Twitter — assuming you spend about 30 seconds on average every time you send in a new a tweet.
Even though it’s kind of a useless application, it’s fun, and has become pretty popular – we made the top 10 Alexa list (briefly) about an hour or so ago. It’s all thanks to the brilliant genius of Sugarrae, who dreamed up the idea when she noticed how much time Streko was wasting on Twitter. Her argument being anyone who has spent over 24 hours of his life on Twitter can’t be getting much real work done. And then she thought, wouldn’t everyone like to know how much time they’re wasting on Twitter? Know it? Hell yeah, Streko said, they want a WordPress plugin for it!
So Streko asked if I could program the site and the WordPress plugin, and after they sat me down in front of a blackboard and explained the complex math involved in the calculations, I said OK. And about 45 minutes later tweetwasters.com beta was built. But it wasn’t very pretty. That’s when they called their friend Reese in; she’s a great designer that put a beautiful logo, design and face lift on the whole thing.
You can see the WordPress Plugin on the sidebar to your right – and you can download it from Rae’s site for free if you would like to add it to your own blog. Or just visit Tweetwasters.com and enter your Twitter screen name. You might be suprised to find out how much time you’ve wasted :)
Tags: api, mashup, programming, tweetwasters, twitter, xml
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18 Responses to “For All You Twitterers: We Launched Tweetwasters.com Today”
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I love this website, which tells me I should stop posting twitter message… ha.
I agree, this site has showed me that twitter is wasting to much of my time. Guess I better go tweet about it. :)
Nothing like a good enlightenment. Thanks for clearing things up.
Boy this is a number I am sure I don’t want to know, but as a kid growing up with the boob-tube I bet my online hours pale in comparison to the hours spent in front of the TV.
I can see this falling into “the wrong hands” and new requests going to all sorts of twitters’, “According to the latest tweetwaster.com figures you’ve spent 8 gazillion seconds making updates on your twitter account therefore you’ve spent 3 years on twitter and I think the least you could do is…”
Surely people will have fun with this new application.
AZMike
P.S. I’ve got to go make out my extortion list.
@AZMike Yeah, I don’t want to know what my TV time-wasting figures from childhood look like. 1980s Knight Rider, Mork & Mindy, and Eight is Enough account for about 120 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Hello,
Nice article, I personally have just started doing the “Twitter” thing, but since I have started to use it, I have fell in love with it. Not just for marketing purposes, but for just talking and having conversations with people.
To me its like going into a huge group of people and being able to talk to all 50 people at one time without having the confusion of trying to “listen” to everyone and getting confused on which conversation you are in at the time. :)
I don’t want to know! Nice idea though.It’s interesting to look up other users.
I’ve always wondered how I spent all that extra time that I can’t seem to account for when I’m filling in my time sheet with the different job numbers.
Now I know.
And it makes me a little self conscious.
I don’t want to know how much time I spend posting “tweets” – nor does my boss :)
I fully agree. However, some people have great success with twitter. But for marketing wise, it’s not recommended. Perhaps, network marketers may have success in twitter.
I guess the way to make Twitter more time effective is to push your content around between site – I use FriendFeed to push content from my social media sites to FriendFeed and then on to Twitter, so less time wasted.
I’m reckining Twitter is also good for recruitment companies, and potentially more effective for them than stalking their prospects on LinkedIn.
Totally useless, but interesting none the less. I have wasted nearly a quarter of a day which I know is a lot less than some other people I know who twitter their days away. I think you need to come out with facebookwaster, you’d see some BIG numbers there.
Yeah, I would like to see a Facebookwaster, but I don’t think there’s any way to even guess the stats on that :)
Is it possible to use the WordPress plugin on a template that doesn’t use widgets? Any help greatly appreciated as I would love to show how much time I waste on Twitter :)
Jen;
Sorry, no, right now it requires widgets
This application is great for those who are worried about time. Most of the people sit on Twitter for whole the day actually doesn’t care about it.
Thanks Barry, thanks for such useful information. Nice post..!!
I know is a lot less than some other people I know who twitter their days away. I think you need to come out with facebookwaster, you’d see some BIG numbers there.thanks barry