Twitter Zombies, another pet project, more zombies

I admit, I’m on quite a zombie kick lately. I’m sure it will blow over or get burned out like any other kick, but for now I’m riding it for all its worth. And this time I targeted my zombie love at Twitter.

My original idea was to use Twitter as a gaming method. Some sort of RPG on Twitter where players can send in commands and so on like a good old classic text-based RPG. I mentioned the idea to my bud Don the Idea Guy and he quickly turned that on its head.

Instead of making an out right game (which I still might try to do), he suggested to just make it a Twitter that creates zombies out of people. A zombie outbreak, basically.

Thus motivated by the zombies and the challenge of learning Twitter’s API, I went at it and found it very easy to work with. The result was Twitter Zombies after only a day or two of figuring things out.

Twitter Zombies is really simple. You send a reply message to @zombieattacks (since I couldn’t use TwitterZombies) and specify who you want to turn into a zombie and how you want to do it. Your friend will become a Twitter zombie and then they can go and turn their friends into zombies.

The only catch is that you must be a zombie before you can make other zombies.

The “fun” behind it all is watching the zombie outbreak. Eventually, if this catches on, I want to integrate the web site with a Google maps widget that will show how the outbreak spreads overtime - just like in the movies. There’s a map and over time more and more red dots show up until they cover the entire world!! Muahahaha!

OK, that’s probably expecting a lot, but hey, if nothing else, I learned how to work with the API and have already come up with a few more ideas on how to use it to build other tools, games, and various web-based services. Should be fun.

So go ahead and give Twitter Zombies a try. Of course, if you’re reading this, you might already be a Twitter zombie!