Fun, Games, and Caffeine in Start-Up Land Let's Name This Puppy

We're there now with our Web App. We need to stop adding Cool Stuff. We need to match what's there to how the users actually use it. We need to find and work out the kinks. 

We need to name it and give it a permanent home. 

That's where you come in.

Please help us name it. 

I'm tired of calling it "WatchamaCallIt" or "WhateverTheHellItsNameIs," or the worst, "BadAss Lite."

Let's make a game of it. 

The person who suggests the name we end up accepting will have a free 5-year membership. "Honourable mentions" will get 2 free years. Let's define Honourable Mentions as the five most popular names.

Yeah, I don't promise to use the most popular name. I learned something from "BoatyMacBoatface." 

Some (most?) of my connections have warped senses of humour. 

I like that about them.

Click here to vote or to add a suggestion. (I'm more than a little scared) This ain't politics, so vote as often as you like. 

That link is where you can add a name suggestion. Suggestions will be listed with your name and Twitter handle, so keep it clean. As a bonus, I'm making your Twitter handle a Follow-Me link.

(Note to self: Why didn't we add a Follow-Me link builder to the User Dashboard? We'll do it. Okay, so now we're at feature lock!) 

You need to know what the App does before you can suggest a name. I mean, how can you suggest a name otherwise?

What "WatchamaCallIt" does

It started out as just a simple way to build Click-to-Tweet links with images like this. It quickly morphed into a full-blown Tweet scheduling app with cross-platform posting capability. The Gary Sharpe mentioned RSS feeds. The little Web App became a Social Media Management Beast.

Let's look at its major features individually. (Sorry, this will be a long post, the feature list is frigging long!)

To call it a Web App is not strictly accurate. Every user creates his/her own App, using our scripts. I guess it's natural for a Ghostwriter to think along the lines of Ghost-Coding. 

Scheduled tweets, retweets, etc all post on your account, not ours. We help you set up your own implementation of Twitter's killer API (Application Program Interface). 

We included instructions on how to set yourself up.

All functions work on the Master Account and any designated sub-accounts. There is a maximum of 50 sub accounts for now. We can revisit that number if need be.

All scheduling functions have hashtag rotation for cross-platform posting. I described how that works in my post, "Twitter as Social Media Server. The Key to Automation."

We went to great lengths to make the user experience balanced across laptops, tablets, and phones. It looks best on a tablet or laptop but works well with any device.

For now, it's only in English. We plan to roll out French, Spanish, Portuguese and German over the coming months.

Watchamacallit is Time-Zone Aware

You schedule tweets in your local time. The server converts it to server time. You don't need to break you head figuring out when to set a tweet. 

You would think that would be an easy thing to do. 

Ok Let's get to what it does

Guess Eventual beBee URL based on Article Title: Yes, it's a guess, but an educated one. We can't be 100% sure. There are a ton of languages and many have special characters. We accounted for English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German characters. I estimate 90-95% accuracy. 

I used it to make the Click-to-Tweet link above.

You just need your beBee post title. Once you have the probable URL you can create your Click-to-Tweet links with images. 

Build Click-to-Tweet links with Images: Start from a URL to point to and the place where Twitter keeps your image. Add the text to tweet. Click and build the link. Easy peasy.

For now, we store the built links for 48 hours. I rarely found a need to go back to one. That's easy to change if users ask for it. (See, Javier, I'm learning from you)

Tweet Scheduling with Images: 

There are 7 active methods for scheduling Tweets. Three more are on the way. 

URLs and image links drop the 140 down to 92. That includes any hashtag you want to use. 

Test users asked for help in making sure their tweets were of the right length. So, we added a live character count. 

You can schedule Tweets... 

• By Minute Interval - Decide how many minutes between Tweets and how many tweets to schedule. The minimum interval is 60 minutes.

• By Daily Tweet Schedule - Choose the hours to Tweet and whether it should be the first half of the hour or the second. The system randomizes the minute within the designated half hour. You can schedule up to a year's worth of tweets in advance.

• By Weekly Tweet Schedule - (under development) Will work much like the daily schedule, but using days of the week instead or hours in a day. Tweets will post randomly within hour blocks. You can schedule up to a year's worth of tweets in advance.
  

• By Monthly Tweet Schedule - (under development) Will work much like the daily schedule, but using days of the month (i.e. dates). Tweets will post at user-selected times. You can schedule up to two years' worth of tweets in advance.
  

• By Daily Frequency within a time range - Choose how many days to run the schedule, and how many times a day to tweet (max 12). Set the range of hours you want and away you go. You can schedule up to a year's worth of tweets in advance.

• By Weekly Frequency within a time range - Choose the time slot and days of the week to schedule. Decide how many tweets to schedule. Done. You can schedule up to a year's worth of tweets in advance.

• Monthly at set time - Choose the date and time to tweet. You can schedule up to two years' worth of tweets in advance.
  

• A Random walk Down Tweet Street - Here's a little whimsy. Decide how many tweets to post per month and for how many months (max 24). The system will post in a seemingly random fashion.

• By Phased Scheduling of Tweets - My personal favourite. You can schedule up to four phases. Each will use different tweeting frequencies. Perfect for writers! You want a blast at first, that tapers down over time. Why write 4 schedules when 1 will do it all?

• Working with RSS feeds: (under development) Boy, that needs its own section. No, it needs its own article! Let's just say that from any RSS feed, you will be able to import posts for scheduling, promote new posts automatically, support your friends' posts, have them support yours, etc etc. Heck you will probably be able to cross-post as well. You will do all that just by writing the article. RSS functions are under development.

Cooperative Aspects

Retweets: (under development) Pretty much everyone finds that a manual retweet is far superior to just clicking the Twitter retweet button. Clicking the button produces an Ok looking tweet.

Manual retweets look like this:

Too bad they are such a pain in the ass to make. What if Manual Retweets were no longer manual at all? 

All the data for the original tweet is in the database. We can stitch a Manual Tweet together automatically.

Let others help you promote. We have two ways to do that.

Cooperative Retweets: Add people to a Clan. Decide how many retweets you want to post per day and when. The system will select tweets at random from those your Clanmates posted that day. 

Forced Retweets: I was thinking of John White and Gloria Ochoa here. People who manage multiple accounts often retweet between them. This feature lets you choose the accounts that will retweet each other, and how often. 

Minor Growth Hacking: (under development) Along with Clans to retweet through, we created Tribes for growth hacking. Tribes are based on common interest or affinity-based. Tribe members can follow other members. 

Politeness suggests that you return the favour.

The system will inform you of who followed and offer for you to follow them.

Let the silly name suggestions commence!

• Fun, Games, and Caffeine in Start-Up Land
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