Have you ever logged into Twitter and accidentally seen a spoiler for one of your favorite shows? Twivo can fix that.
Twivo is a Twitter application developed by 17-year-old high school student Jennie Lamere. She created it at the TVnext Hack event in Boston, in which programmers tried to create the next must-have app.
The name “Twivo” is the combined forms of Twitter and Tivo. It’s a Twitter extension that works on Google Chrome and Firefox that allows users to type in the names of shows they don’t want to see spoilers for.
In a video about Twivo, Jennie explained her rationale behind the app.
“I love to be on Twitter as I’m watching TV shows,” Jennie said, “but what I don’t like is if I’m not watching a TV show live, then my timeline is full of Tweets from the celebrities of the shows that I like to watch.”
Users type in the name of the show they’re watching and push a “Record” button. This blocks all of the tweets about that show from the user, while keeping track of them.
Once the users watch the shows, they can click a “Stop” button to stop the harvesting of those Tweets. Then, they click a “Play” button, which displays the Tweets about the show that the user didn’t want to see before. The Tweets made by more influential users are usually more relevant, so they appear bigger on a feed to the user.
Like Tivo, it records content so it can be viewed later when you want to see it.
Eventually, Twivo might be a Facebook app as well. It will be a few weeks before it’s fine-tuned and available to the public. When that happens, Jennie wants the app to be free.
Not only did Jennie’s invention win the “Best use of sync-to-broadcast” category in the hackathon, but she also won Best In Show and took home a prize of $2500.
“Vote for me so you can help me pay for college,” Jennie joked before the voting rounds. Look like her request came true!
Judge Marie-José Montpetit thought Jennie and her app were special for a number of reasons. Among them she was proud that Jennie was a female programmer.
“I’d like all the women in the room to applaud,” Montpetit said. “She was the only woman contestant.”
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