I have had a love/hate relationship with Twitter since joining the platform in 2008.
On one hand, I find it really amazing how it can bring people together to talk about cool projects and new opportunities. My good buddy, Jay Neely (who runs the Boston Startups Guide), absolutely loves Twitter. He loves everything about it. He loves connecting, helping, reading, and discovering. He really tried to evangelize Twitter, but I never fully drank the koolaid. Why not?
In my opinion, Twitter is a tremendous time sink. I find myself wasting time on Twitter. Instead of gaining valuable insights, I catch up on the trending silicon valley drama and lose 15 minutes of my life. I know I can solve this problem by unfollowing people and curating my list better, but that takes a while to do. Also, I can’t unfollow friends on Twitter. One, it will be awkward. Two, I feel like I have to deal with their rants about baseball teams because being able to DM them really comes in handy at times.
When promoting my projects, there is a definite place for Twitter in my marketing mix. If nothing else, I want to let my friends on Twitter know what I’m working on. In short, I want all of the great things about Twitter without the time sink.
I often use Buffer when I find something interesting and remember to tweet. So, what’s my problem?
I always forget to tweet!
I find and read tons of interesting content from Hacker News, Bootstrappers.io (solid curated list of content for Bootstrappers created by @NicholasHould), and ProductHunt. Shout out to USEPANDA.COM! If you’re a fan of HN and don’t know about Panda (by @ahmetsulek and @williamchanner) , it just might change your life. It’s not a problem that I can’t find interesting content.
It’s a problem that I always forget to tweet!
With that being said, I’m building a chrome extension that I’m calling “Don’t Forget to Tweet”. The idea is that every few hours, a small modal will appear with a textbox and tweet button. The textbox will be filled with a random URL and page title that I visited recently. You’ll have the option to either tweet, add to your Buffer, or cancel.
Hopefully, with this, I’ll remember to tweet a little more. If you think this is awesome idea, a terrible idea, or somewhere in the middle, please mention something in the comments or find me on twitter.
A great side effect is that this project is going to strengthen my knowledge and skills in writing chrome extensions. (Time for a product placement…)
[sc:chrome_extension_book_email_list ]
What’s cool about the Don’t Forget To Tweet extension is that it will force me to work with Chrome’s Browser History API. I have only been working on this project for a few hours, but I am already learning a lot about how the Chrome History API works and it’s pretty intriguing. For instance, it doesn’t distinguish between a url shortener, and the full url that the shortened url points to. It counts that as two separate website visits.
I’ve also been posting tutorials about chrome extensions on here. If there’s something you want to see or learn, feel free to reach out to me in the comments or on twitter @cavezza.