April 1st, 2009
TweetDoubler: 280 Twitter characters?
It was only a few minutes after midnight on the eve of April 1, 2009 — the day we know as April Fools’ Day — when I fell for my first trick. As the devoted Twitter user I am, I was checking my updates, and came across something a friend posted. It had to do with Twitter, and I, for the sole purpose of staying informed to relay the information to you on this blog, blindly went along with it and fell for the trap. I felt like a moth being pulled into a light, or a lemming falling off the edge. Here’s what happened, (and how you can avoid the same mistake and embarrassment):
First, you’ll probably see a nice little tweet from one of your Twitter friends that looks like this: “Used an amazing tool by Razorfish that doubles the size of your tweets. http://tweetdoubler.com - beta today!” And this is how it gets you. You wonder, how is it possible for Twitter, which prides itself in its 140 character limit, to possibly be doubled by some simple app? The curiosity will eventually get the best of you, and you’ll try it out.
The site says TweetDoubler works with a “patented compression algorithm that works on text (similar to the way JPEG compression compresses an image).” It says its only available for today (the first clue I should have seen), so of course you’ll want to jump at the opportunity to try it out for yourself.
After heading over to TweetDoubler, you’ll enter your text — which will never see the light of day again, — enter your Twitter username and password, and click “Double It!”
From there, you will be taken to a new page, where your fate will be shown to you: You are a sucker. But hey, at least you’re entered in the TwitterDoubler hall of fame — something which I can’t seem to delete myself from.
You can then pass on the trick to naive Twitterers by clicking a button that updates your status. At 2 a.m. EST, there were already 340 “Aprils fooled so far.” We’ll keep our eyes out for more April Fools’ Day tricks to share with you. I’m sure I’ll have no problem stumbling onto another one.
Jennifer R. Bergen is a journalist and blogger living in New York City. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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