TwitterHat, the next idea

I get really discouraged about creating web ideas when I see they already exist. I know competition is good, but in the end I usually figure I don’t have enough time, money, or motivation to compete, even if I think (or know) I could make the same idea better. So to get around this, I try to build an idea before I research to see if there is any competition. Not the smartest, I know, but it gets me moving because I stay excited about my own ideas.

Now that I’m using Twitter on a somewhat daily basis, and since Twitter is buzzword that people are jumping on (even if they don’t know why), I figure it’s not too late to try and use that interest to get an idea of the ground. This time my idea is TwitterHat.

TwitterHat is targeted squarely at the Twittering crowd and, in short, is a service that tacks on advertisements to Twitter links.

I know, I know…advertisements suck. This is true, but the motivation for TwitterHat was not to sell out to anyone with few bucks to burn. My motivation was to promote my own blog by piggybacking on Twitter. Using Twitter to market the radio stations has proved to me people are listening, reading, and clicking. There are a lot of people Twittering and a lot of them have their own little blogs (or big blogs), and I just think they each should get their minute in the sun - because if you clicked their link, then you might like their writing too.

TwitterHat works just like TinyURL in that it shortens long web addresses into smaller, Twitter-friendly address that you then copy and paste into your Twitter message. That message goes out like normal and when someone clicks on it, it takes them to the full web address with the only addition being a wee tiny frame at the top that displays a banner and link back to your blog.

I know this isn’t the first or last attempt to inject advertising into Twitter. I’m not so sure TwitterHat will be sucessful. I’m hoping small time bloggers and Twitters like myself can use it to their advantage. But if it grows a little, I won’t complain.

So if you Twitter, give TwitterHat a look and let me know what you think. And if you have a blog of your own, drop a comment and you can join TwitterHat as an advertiser for free.