EasyTwig

A lot happened since last post! After the "sign", it's time to get busy. One more thing: since I'm not a technical type, I'm bringing in a technical co-founder: S is a coder & will help me build out the necessary tech for the MVP.

The whole goal of this project is to learn more about Twitter & it's ecosystem, APIs etc.: the easiest way is to build an MVP, preferably for your own use case (see previous post for details).

The idea is to use the Twitter API search to find all tweets with a certain keyword: in this case "explain it in basketball terms".

Now, in our specific case, the tweets with this phrase are in majority replies to an already existing tweet, usually some breaking news. For the funny explanation, we would therefore need 3 tweets:

• News/source tweet: that breaking news, e.g. Lionel Messi in talks to transfer to MLS
• The setup tweet: is that tweet "ok guys, can someone explain in basketball terms?"
• The answer/punchline tweet: the funny reply you're dying from laughter while reading it.

The idea is to collect URLs for the three tweets & then send it via API to a specific Twitter screenshotting tool: send URLs, get screenshots, post them to Twitter as memes & start the content flywheel (hopefully).

We've settled on the codename "Explain it" - as in our first search term: "explain it in basketball terms".

It's the 9th December 2022: the world has its eyes set on Qatar, where the World Cup is taking place. When I say World Cup, you know I mean the football one. Yes, football - not soccer.

For the last couple of days, we've been chilling & hanging around. The discussion around memes and Twitter and building an MVP is interwoven with looking at the big waves splashing on the sandy beach, bottles of beer & tapas.

I said that "before starting actual work on this, we need a sign". And we've got one.

Marquinhos stepped up to the penalty spot - the ball hit the post. Croatia won, Brazil's out. Everyone is shocked - wouldn't thought of it in a million years.

"OK Blendor, no more excuses - here's your sign. Now get to f*cking work!"

Yep, I'm positive. I'm going to build a Twitter meme account.

And I got a really cool idea for it - you ready for this one?

You know how when some news breaks, there's always that one person that writes under the tweet: "Explain in basketball terms?".

And how there's always this one person that replies with the most hilarious comparisson imaginable?

Well, I'm going to gather all these replies & showcase them on a Twitter account. Yeah, after I come back home: first I have to hangout with my friends that I haven't seen in almost 6 months.

But I made the greatest mistake: I mentioned this idea while drinking - and now everybody's hyped about this! Guess I'll have to build it now, right?

I was scrolling my Twitter feed, reading these takes on how "Twitter is getting worse as time goes on." Yep, pretty classic take on the internet.

For some reason, this time, it got me thinking: what do we need on Twitter? What kind of content? After some time, I've got it: we need another meme account on Twitter! 💡

I was traveling on a plane to Gran Canaria to meet up with my friends, so I was thinking of working on this idea after returning home. The concept of creating & growing a Twitter account got me all excited again about Twitter. "We can make Twitter better here!" I thought to myself.

But first: let's enjoy the sun, beaches & good food!