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6 Ways Twitter Can Help A Bad Memory

October 15th, 2009 | Tags:

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By Trevor Dobrygoski of Twit 101 – Follow him @trevord209

Have you seen the Hangover? If not, you may want to grab the eight other people out there who haven’t and go give it a peek. Without ruining it for all eight of you, here is a quick rundown.

A group of four friends go to Vegas to celebrate an upcoming wedding. After a long night of bachelor party fun, they lose the groom. The remaining three spend the bulk of the movie trying to remember what happened, find their friend and make it back to the wedding in LA.

Had the guys took advantage of their Twitter account and used a few of these simple tips, many pitfalls and shenanigans from the day after could have been avoided. I am not a fan of using cliches, but hindsight is 20/20. (I’ll admit if they did use any or all of these tips, it would have made for a really boring movie.)

1. Mobile Updates

Everyone is talking, texting and taking pics and video from their phone when they are out for a night on the town. Using your mobile device to take pictures of your night is commonplace. For smartphone owners posting to Twitter is super easy with apps like Ubertwitter or Tweetie.

If you have a standard voice only phone you can MMS (picture message) your mobile photography to a web app such as Twitpic. Twitpic has a dedicated email address for you to send the MMS to.
Here are the steps to find out where to send the MMS to:

1. Log into Twitpic using your Twitter credentials

2. Go to settings and you’ll see the email address Twitpic has created for you.

3. Copy that email address and add it to your phone.

2. Use Hashtags

Using hashtags is a great way of tracking topics, events or even are sometimes used as part of an application. In the case of this party, the group could have used a hashtag like #dougsvegasparty.

This could have brought all of the random tweets, pics and videos posted over the couple day period together. This could have answered some questions early on like “Why is there a Tiger in the bathroom?”. If they glanced through the tweets with that hashtag, they might come across something like this: [Mike Tyson needs better security. Got the tiger in the back of the cop car without wakin' up the champ. Back to the hotel #dougsvegasparty]

3. Timestamp

If you haven’t noticed when browsing your timeline, every tweet has a time and date at the bottom. In the case of a bad memory (self-induced or not) this alone could have filled in many of the time gaps when things are a little hazy.

4. GPS Location

Many of the new devices and services can put a map tack on Google Maps showing where you were when you sent the tweet; kind of like a digital bread crumb. If you go with a location based service option (Brightkite, Ubertwitter, etc), it is dually helpful. Your tweets will be time stamped and also give you a location of your tweet. This will come in very handy when mid-way through the night when things are a little fuzzy and your updates aren’t as easy to follow.

The problem with the first four solutions is they are very public. Anyone, including Stu’s girlfriend, could have followed the evening via Twitter. While this may be okay for some events, the happenings of these couple of days needed to be a little more discrete. Tips five and six will be a little more incognito yet offer some handy features.

5. Reminders (@rtm)

This one could have been a huge timesaver for the gang. If they sent a DM something like this to @rtm (Remember the Milk): [d rtm tomorrow 9am get Doug from the roof], they would have received an SMS with a reminder at 9am. All four of the guys could have had a horribly hung over drive back to LA together.
If you can text your updates and DMs into Twitter, you should also receive incoming DMs. Alternatively, Blackberry and other smartphone users can get them with one of the numerous available applications.

6. Evernote (@myen)

With a slogan like “Remember Everything”, following Evernote on Twitter could have helped the guys out tremendously. Evernote can be updated by texting a DM to @myen. All of the DMs can be searched for by typing DM or Twitter into the search box. You can take a quick peek at this post from the Evernote blog for more explanation (and a video).

After the Vegas wedding DMs like these could have shed some light on their vehicle debacles: [d myen bought the high roller package. see Eddie before we head back.] or [d myen left the Mercedes parked on Las Vegas Blvd. Hope $4 was enough for parking].

This only scratches the surface of how Twitter can be used to remember things. Share your tips in the comments below.

[image: Kevin Lau]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinlau/2188869187/