Politweets and Character140

With the popularity of twittertale last week, we didn’t want to stop the momentum. An idea came to mind and thus resulted in Politweets

Politweets rose up from all the great publicity twittertale got (and is still getting). We knew we had to take the same technology and use it for something a little more practical. Dan Croak of thoughtbot reached out with an idea to track the presidential election. This was one of the many ideas we had come up with but now that people were asking for it, we put it on top of the priority list. There was a definite need and I wanted to be the one to help provide that solution to the twitter users. Dan also offered his rail’s expertise to help us get it out the door quickly (in time for the New hampshire primary). In three short days we came up with the concept, designed and delivered a product that we are all very proud of. This evening we made some minor tweaks, one being a better iphone experience (in case any one out on the trail needs up to date info), another in preparation for next steps/features.

There have been many articles written lately questioning how twitter is going to monetize. Subscription models, ads and other methods have been mentioned and we don’t think those are the long term solution. They have built an amazing platform for sites like politweets and twittertale to take advantage of. I think you will see them taking advantage of it also, really soon. Ev, if you want to talk, I have a million ideas of how this data can be used… hint.. hint.

Just by analyzing the tweets I have noticed some really interesting trends. One for example, people that speak foreign languages really like to swear in English. That really blew me away, not really sure why but it did. I was also astonished by all the political commentary from other countries and how much they are interested in this election. We will be continuing to add features in both twittertale and politweets that showcase some of these trends. The first thing you will be seeing are candidate pages on politweets. We want to do the best we can to prepare those undecided voters. I will stop there because I don’t want to give anymore away.

Finally, we are now operating under the name Character140 (website coming soon). It isn’t so much a physical company but more of a collective of guys who enjoy twitter (and sms) and want to continue extending the uses and data that is being captured. Character140 is Doug March, Gabe Hanford, Jason Garber and Min Kim