Ever get fed up of seeing the same phrases used over and over again? I was looking through lists of Twitter users on Mr. Tweet and started to get irritated by the number of social media experts, affilate marketing gurus and people who were “passionate” about everything from Twitter to printer cartridges.

As a private joke, I wrote a simple php script which would take any Twitter bio and replace certain words, in a rude and derogatory way. I called it “Unmasker” and it provided a few minutes of fun.

My colleague Greg Smith suggested that the idea had the potential to go viral if it was presented in a fun way. He (eventually) produced a great design for the app.

Given the quality of the artwork, I thought it only fair to put some effort in the UX design and create the scrolling background effect. The whole front-end is essentially jQuery powered, including the use of Ariel Flesler’s excellent ScrollTo plugin. A simple php script provides the database, Twitter API wrapper and text-replacement functionality.

I set up a new Twitter account to use for the app, I knew that it would need to generate a lot of tweets to spread the links but I didn’t want to spam anybody. I wrote into the application logic that nobody would receive more than one automated @mention. Anybody following the Unmasker twitter account would probably not do so for too long, unless they were spam-bots themselves in which case who cares?

The Unmasker account also allowed Greg and myself to role-play the Unmasker avatar – sarcastic, abrasive, belligerent … come to think of it, we haven’t really needed to role-play too much.

So on Thursday 23rd July at about 10:30 GMT we started the ball rolling by seeding a few choice names into the unmasker application, many of them were friends who already knew about it, others were randomly selected from searches for terms such as “social media” and “expert”.

Reactions have been mixed

Most people seem to see the joke, some are baffled and a few have been wonderfully rude.
countzeero’s compliment was particularly nice

countzeero: @StandUP4Design I am getting my ass toasted right next to you “down” there @unmasker is one of the best twitups I have seen…
http://twitter.com/countzeero/status/2873340566

…as was PesciTriD’s Unmasker Haiku

PesciTriD: thanks to @unmasker / ribald twitter speak revealed / keep your tweets comely
http://twitter.com/PesciTriD/statuses/2818433827

jasoncrouch and MrBoom both suffered from complete sense of humor failures …

jasoncrouch: @unmasker Get a life. You are a sad little clown
http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch/statuses/2798942492

MrBoom: go away fuck face
http://twitter.com/MrBoom/status/2819017913

amadee branded Unmasker a Twitspammer and we never even offered him any cut-price pharmaceuticals

amedee: blocking @unmasker – yet another Twitspammer
http://twitter.com/amedee/status/2827979231

BillBoorman and rnadworny were under the impression that I was trying to remain anonymous, despite putting my name and twitter username in the page footer and using the same domain as this blog.

BillBoorman: I unmasked @unmasker http://is.gd/1KatS #unmasked Easier to critiscise when you hide. Who are you really?
http://twitter.com/BillBoorman/status/2817328451

rnadworny: @Techn0tic hiding behind @unmasker . Come out of the closet, Dave!
http://twitter.com/rnadworny/status/2796790735

Rufus_Jay finally worked it out in a magnificent display of calm restraint

Rufus_Jay: I get what @unmasker is up to. Bit miffed at first, but I understand the point. #unmasked
http://twitter.com/Rufus_Jay/status/2815259193

oxfordgirl seemed to find the whole whole thing extremely upsetting, still unsure what she thought we were “trying to track” or where the connection to Iran came from in her panic-stricken tweet …

oxfordgirl: Be ware @unmasker may be trying to track, Don’t click on links #iranelection #iran
http://twitter.com/oxfordgirl/status/2828138746

… but that didn’t stop lorettas3, AHMARINEJAD, lady_stardust9, artfanatic411, Shadiii and a whole host of others from blindly retweeting the alarm with no idea whatsoever of what it was, thankfully Kate_Butler chipped in as the voice of reason with her perceptive defusal

Kate_Butler: @oxfordgirl i’m pretty sure @unmasker is simply a bit of harmless fun. nothing to worry about.
http://twitter.com/Kate_Butler/status/2828171625

That wasn’t enough to stop the_FNGa from demonstrating his suitability for the intelligence services by doing a whois lookup on my domain. Clever(ish), but obviously not clever enough to actually look at the site to see what the fuss was about.

The_FNGa: @unmasker is running a BS script via Twitter API. If you don’t like it, contact David Kinsella @ dave@web-developer.ws #iranelection #iran
http://twitter.com/The_FNGa/status/2831514109

He also tweeted my phone number, which unlike the email address actually is current and in use. So far, the number of calls I’ve received to complain remains at zero. I was hoping Mr FNGa would call me up to discuss the problem but it seems his grievances are only serious enough for people other than himself to take care of. If anybody knows his number…

What’s the point?

Why is everybody so hung up on this idea of there being a point? I’ve always thought that some of the best stuff on the Internet is completely pointless. For example one of my favourite websites of all time is Eric Conveys an Emotion check it out, it’s pointless fun – just like unmasker.

Did it work?

Considering that the site was launched with no real fanfare and a minimal amount of seeding, the results have been very promising so far. In the first 5 days since launch we’ve had 5,883 visits and 7,707 pageviews. The traffic spiked on Friday at 2715 visits and with between 500 and 1000 visits on each of the other days. It will be interesting to see how the traffic continues.

We decided to include the hashtag #unmasked in all of the tweets sent by the app so that we could try to track things better, according to Twist, Friday saw #unmasked grabbing a 0.02% share of Twitter traffic, it’s hard to tell how accurate that is though.

What else did we learn?

• Being a bit rude provokes a reaction, we may not have got as much traffic without ruffling a few feathers.
• Some people fear what they don’t understand and react accordingly (that’s not really news is it?)
• If you use a popular hashtag, people will retweet anything – try tweeting “Chocolate ice-cream cures hemorroides #iranelection” and see what happens
• Some people are so insecure about their online profile, they will change it in reaction to a text-replacement script making fun of them
• Some people do this because the script mocked them for having no bio – this is perfectly acceptable
• Some people stick with their bio despite what unmasker says, these people are right to do so
• When building something that you hope will go viral; a simple idea – well executed is probably a better option than a complex idea hurriedly thrown together.

What’s next?

I don’t know, any suggestions?