Twitter ♥ Halloween

Written on 31st October 2008                                                                                                              7 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Today is Halloween and a lot of Internet Companies are giving it some attention. Google has a special logo for the occasion and Twitter supports a few extra signs. Here is a table of scary faces you can use today. Copy the codes on the left (like >o<) and paste them into Twitter. Then submit your tweet. Twitter will turn your code into an image. Give it a try and scare your friends!

>o<	=			( | )	=
[:-]-I-	=			∑:*)	=
<|:~(	=			}:o{	=
(|:|/)	=			:-[	=
8-#	=			X-/	=
+-(	=			////Ö\\\\	=
`O	=			More TwitterKeys

Combine these Halloween TwitterKeys with our own library of TwitterKeys for extra effect! You can copy/paste these text characters too:  ☹ ☠ ✖ ☁ ☄ ☣ ☢ ♐ ø

google, halloween, twitter, twitterkeys

7 Comments »

TwitterKeys: the first 48 hours…

Written on 18th September 2008                                                                                                              65 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

A little more than 24 hours ago we posted a bookmarklet here titled TwitterKeys and then all hell broke loose. Here is what happened before we launched it and what has happened since.

On Tuesday evening, just as I was getting ready to go home, I noticed a Tweet on Twitter with a symbol in it which I hadn’t seen before. I copy pasted the symbol and Tweeted it:

Sander (@sandervdv) was working next to me and said “Hey, just open your Character Palette. There are tons of symbols there that you can copy paste”. I immediately did and then replied “Very cool, but kind of hard to find. Can’t we just put them all in a floating browser window so you can easily copy paste them while you are Twittering?”. Sander smiled and said “Sure, and I can even write a Bookmarklet so you can easily access it”.

Then I left the office and went home. At 8pm I opened my laptop and found Sander’s Bookmarklet code in my Inbox. I did a quick test with the help of a few Twitter users to see which symbols would work on all platforms and by 10 pm I uploaded the files, wrote a simple post with the details and launched the whole thing by Twittering the following line:

I ♥ this ☛ http://tinyurl.com/5hpf4f ☺

Immediately I noticed people starting to play with the characters and flowers, comets and stars flying all over Twitter. Within a few hours the Twitter founders found out about TwitterKeys and twittered about it:

Biz Stone (Twitter.com Co-Founder & 16,680 followers):
“Trying out TwitterKeys ☺ which helps you put little icons in your tweets ♥”
http://twitter.com/biz/statuses/923898532

Evan Williams (Twitter.com Co-Founder & 18,650 followers):
“♺ @biz’s post about http://bit.ly/twitterkeys. Neat! ”
http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/923901604

Then other famous people started talking about it:

Howard Rheingold (3,908 followers)
“I ♥ this ☛ http://tinyurl.com/5hpf4f ☺ via @bomega”
http://twitter.com/hrheingold/statuses/923879515

Leo Laporte (55,837 followers)
“I ♥ Twitterkeys. ☛ http://snipurl.com/3r09l ☚”
http://twitter.com/leolaporte/statuses/924264132

So within a few hours these 4 Big Twitter users promoted Twitterkeys to their combined 95,075 followers. The result? About 15,000 unique visitors to the original blog post within 24 hours, 60+ diggs, lots and lots of TwitterKeys on Twitter, reviews on 150+ blogs and a nice spike in RSS Feed subscribers…

Today we launched version 2 of TwitterKeys which displays even more characters. If you haven’t installed it yet do it now:

Drag this link to your browser
bookmarks toolbar: TwitterKeys

Here at The Next Web Blog we love to write about people working on Next Web technologies and services. But we also love to contribute a little ourselves from time to time. Hope you like what we do!

Biz Stone, evan willams, Howard Rheingold, leo laporte, meme, twitter, twitterkeys, viral growth

65 Comments »

TwitterKeys: Enhance your Twitter conversations

Written on 16th September 2008                                                                                                              553 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

As you might know Twitter accepts more than just basic text. The service is UTF8 compatible which means that instead of tweeting “I love you” you could just as well use “I ♥ you”. Or how about this:

“I’m going to ✈ to ☭ in the morning after I make a ☎ to make sure my ♂ is ✔ with it. ✌ for now and don’t forget to ✍ and lets have ♨ soon!”

But how do you remember all these damn characters?

Aha!

TwitterKeys is a small tool we (@boris & @sandervdv) developed here at The Next Web Blog which provides you with a floating window with all these funny symbols you can use in Twitter. These are the symbols we currently provide:

Drag this link to your browser
bookmarks toolbar: TwitterKeys

Now go and share this with your friends on Twitter…

twitter, twitterkeys

553 Comments »