

Ask HN: Rate my webapp, Tweet Link Monster - jackowayed
http://tweetlinkmonster.com
It's not really what I would call a "startup" as I don't really plan to monetize, but I'd still like to see what you guys think and get users. 
Plus if you have any ideas of how to monetize well (the only ways I can think of are charging, charging for features, or putting ads in the feed), I'd be happy to hear them.
It's my first webapp and my first post to HN. 
And if you'd please, don't turn this into a "never give your twitter password to anyone" "but I love all of these apps" discussion. As soon as twitter implements oauth, I'll use it. Until then, all of the solutions are ugly, and most become scaling issues very quickly. Though I did just come up with one that is only really ugly. 
Comments/suggestions/signing up are all greatly appreciated.
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PStamatiou
interesting concept and this might actually be useful to me as I "follow"
something like 700 or 800 ppl.

on the other hand, i will not be able to use it. my twitter password is for me
and me only:

<http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/12/twitter-and-passwords.html>

isn't there a way to use this with the user's currently logged in twitter
cookie/session or some such like <http://twitpay.me> does?

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jpcx01
Really? Seriously, what permanent damage can twitter link monster do when they
steal your twitter account and start posting PR0n ad links to it. You'll get
your twitter account back, and then just delete those posts. And twitter
monster will have made about $1.30 in affiliate fees, and be out of business.
And you'd have some great material for 6-7 blog posts about how you'll never
give out your twitter account information again.

Sorry, your paranoia just doesn't add up. Now, in some cases it does. If
someone stole my gmail account, they'd be able to use google payments to buy
whatever they hell they want. But twitter? Give me a break.

~~~
jackowayed
No, I understand the issues, especially for normal users. Normal users have a
1-password-fits-all scheme, which is a really bad idea. Then getting your
Twitter account stolen is megabad. Even so though, there's twitpay, which lets
you make payments via Twitter (I think it's setup so that it would only be any
money that you have in your twitpay account that someone could steal, not
money in paypal/credit card.) Still, if someone leaves a few hundred in their
twitpay account that's sizable. Plus there's also a bug someone found so that
once someone is logged in as you, they can just not close the window and keep
tweeting as you forever. But that's still just tweeting. But really, the only
people that really need to be wary of giving out their twitter password are
people who use that username and pass for other things and people who have
larges sums of money in their Twitpay account. I'm not stealing your passwords
anyway though :-)

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speek
You have no idea how happy I am to see that you used the word "webapp" instead
of "startup." (read: very happy)

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eisokant
Hi Jackowayed,

This is almost exactly like my web app <http://tweetlinks.org> which I created
and posted here several weeks ago.

Eiso

~~~
jackowayed
Oh wow. I'm busy enough that I sorta read HN in and out, so I didn't see that
thread. Well, good idea :-) They do vary in delivery method though. So it's
not like I copied your app. (I actually started mine first. I've been doing it
slowly over the last several months.) Neither of us seems to have plans of
monetization, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

~~~
eisokant
Don't worry at all - It was just a fun app I made when I had some free time.
If you want I would be happy to share some of the things I picked up on the
way that made it run smoother. I was also going to implement an RSS feed
because it was requested by some people (see YC thread) - I hope you don't
mind. Let me know.

All the best and goodluck with it!

Eiso

~~~
jackowayed
yeah, you can add RSS if you want. it's cool. and I'd love to hear any advice
you have. I'm jackowayed on twitter and gmail

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critke
I like it - not sure if I'd use it, I get too many links through feeds and
regular twitter use... but the biggest problem for me is that I hate putting
my password into 3rd party apps.

~~~
jackowayed
As I posted above/below/wherever that thread migrated to now, I plan to use
OAuth once Twitter makes that an option.

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teej
My first reaction was "what the f...", but I got quickly sucked in to reading
about it. I think your value proposition is clear, though it isn't something I
would use.

And the monseter is growing on me :-)

~~~
jackowayed
yeah, I wanted something to make it stand out in the crowd of twitter apps.

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Shamiq
haha...I would love to actually see that monster catch a bird with those
hands...

I know some links show up more than once among the various people I follow on
twitter. Anyway you can eliminate that redundancy?

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jackowayed
yeah, that's a good idea. I'll probably add it soon.

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mihasya
It would be extra magical if you actually aggregated tweets by link, so that
it only showed up as one "link", but you could see what everyone posted along
with it.

~~~
jackowayed
that would be pretty magical. it would take some refactoring of my setup, but
it would be awesome. I'll fiugre out how much work it would take and think
about it.

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hardik
I think the idea is very cool. Although I don't use twitter from phone I many
times use it only for links. I am sure there must be others like me out there
too.. great concept!

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mattdennewitz
best mascot ever. very seriously.

