There’s something alluring about the idea of a message in a bottle. You write something, cast it out to sea, and hopefully someday some random person finds it. Naturally, someone had to do that for Twitter.
As a Twitter app, 140inABottle is as simple as they come. On the page, you’re presented with a 140-character space to write whatever you want. You’re not asked to sign in to Twitter to send it, because it will be sent from the 140inabottle Twitter account. The only thing you have to do is complete a reCAPTCHA to ensure you’re a human and not spamming the system.Once you fill out and cast away your tweet, it goes into 140inABottle’s system for the next 1 to 90 days. That’s the key; just like a message in a bottle in the sea, the tweet won’t be delivered immediately, but rather at a random date in the next three months when it finds “land” (the tweet stream).
But here’s the kicker: Your tweet (which is again, anonymous and being sent from the 140inabottle Twitter account) will be directed at someone completely random. Essentially, they will have “found” your tweet in a bottle and get to read it. To some people this will undoubtedly be extremely annoying, but come on, it’s one tweet, and kind of cool. I can’t wait to see the reactions on Twitter which will undoubtedly include things like, “@140inabottle why are you sending me random messages?”
There have been a few other anonymous tweet services, but most have been based around the idea that you can say evil things and get away with it. This is different. That said, I’m sure people will figure out how to game this to be dumbasses anonymously. It’s not hard, just include an @reply in your 140inABottle tweet and the person you’re directing it to will see it as well.
The service is the brainchild of New York-based techster Sam Bensalem. He told us that he drew inspiration for it from Kevin Costner’s 1999 movie Message In A Bottle. We’ll pretend he didn’t say that and instead said the inspiration came from The Police song.
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