Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com (opens in new tab)

The fundamental problem here is that I don't know if I want to tweet about a video before I watch it. A tweet is like an endorsement, especially when you have the extreme burden of more than 10 twitter followers (as I have) - you have a responsibility to your adoring public to ensure you fill your stream with high quality, relevant content.

All jest aside, I think it's a great idea to have the ability to tweet during a video as a seamless experience.

You've chosen a great example with Mixergy. Andrew's interviews are LOOONG and I'm frightfully busy. I love watching his videos but I rarely make it through to the end. If I have a tab open with hootsuite in it I'll quite often hop across and tweet that I just watched the video, if the video were totally awesome I'd open up a tab to get to hootsuite and tweet about it but if it's nice and interesting but not bone shatteringly good, no-one but me and Wistia's video hosting stats will know that I watched it.

If, however, the "Are you enjoying this video? Click to tweet about it right now" came up during the first half of a video, I'd be far more likely to spread the word about what I'm watching more often. Obviously it would have to be less obtrusive than it is now and it shouldn't interrupt the flow of the video at all.

This is a clever idea, it is however very horrible for users. I would close a page if this was requested of me, although you may have some luck with people in the "social media" field.

If I was running this site I would have it create a prompt at the end of the video that says "oh hey if you enjoyed this why not share on Twitter?" but I guess Youtube already supports that natively... sort of.

Nice, I'd personally like to see an option to allow users to dismiss the dialog and not tweet but still see the video.

I can see some uses for forcing a tweet but also for not forcing it.

Well done for diving in and learning something new.

This is the perfect intersection between pretty crafty and annoying as hell.

It might be stronger if you could play the first 5 minutes and then prompt for the tweet to see the rest of the video.

Hi guys, thanks for the response and feedback so far.

A couple things:

* This puts the M in MVP. By rolling it live, I hope to prove (or disprove) the general concept.

* As I mentioned earlier, the next iteration will include an option for the video creator to add a 'dismiss' button to allow the viewer to bypass the tweet requirement and just play the video.

* The next thing I want to test is an 'in-stream' tweet requirement. Perhaps it shows 30-90 seconds of a video and then it prompts for a tweet.

* I'm working on other, less obtrusive social actions: FB like, follow, etc.

Thanks again for the feedback. Keep 'em coming. :)

I can understand some of the criticisms in this thread (and from a user experience point of view they're pretty valid), but I think using TweetPerView on your videos is more like saying "this video isn't free, but instead of paying money to watch it, you're paying a tweet's worth of social capital to watch it".

I mean, ignoring the fact that the video is on YouTube and all.

I have to laugh, because although I don't think I'd do this, most of my clients are pageview hungry media sites, and they would love this. I'd say within a month one of them will ask me if it's feasible to implement.

This reminds me in some ways of SolveMedia (the CAPTCHA that forces users to engage with advertisers). What if you forced someone to tweet a CAPTCHA (I'm commenting on this hot new video, check it out!) and then used the Twitter API to verify?

If I were ever forced to tweet about a video before I watched it, I would immediately close the tab and instead send a tweet about how idiotic the video poster is for making me jump through such a ridiculous hoop.

I'm not even sure how you'd take into account someone not actually having a Twitter account in the first place. I hear tell those people call themselves "normal".

Edit: almost forgot... if this "service" ever took off, the first thing I'd do is write a plugin to disable it.

Wonderful that you did this all by your self. How long did it take? Other thing, I personally didnt like the "obligation" to tweet to see de video, one thing that would bem more interesting it is if you need to tweet to continue to watch the video. That guarantees that you are enjoying, and you want to share. Other thing, maybe some real time tweets would be very fun, like you write something little(100 characters) and than you have an update in tweeter.

The design is fantastic and I think you might be on to something here. Although there's the obvious problem (as seen from the comments) of users not being able to see what they endorse first, you will find ways to mitigate this.

Perhaps you let users tweet in the next X minutes of viewing; if they don't like it, they close the tab and there's no tweet.

In any case, good luck, and I look forward to seeing this work for you!

I ain't tweeting shit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtXHp5wXLE

I'm glad you learned PHP, but frankly I don't see how this site actually adds value.

If someone likes your video, a simple call-to-action (preroll?) or a page element loading with a tweet box seems like it'd be more effective than an ultimatum.

Good design though, seems like you're on the right track for creating products. Good luck!

Oh, good, you do allow the user to edit the tweet before sending it off.

Nice job on the self learning part. Not sure about interrupting my video viewing experience. Maybe have that option at the end of the video or pop up subtly in the middle somewhere.

Holy crap. This. Looks. Stunning.

We need to talk.

Congrats on learning PHP and building something. But what about that HUGE percentage of users that don't have twitter accounts?

The Tweet should contain the "title" of the video rather than saying "this is a great video"

So you created something to annoy users. How is this good?

maybe you'd want to let people watch your video without having to tweet it. just a suggestion.

it needs an [x] button in the corner

Very nice idea, but you should let users tweet in the middle of the video or at the end. If you force me to tweet before I won't watch it, but in the middle I will be very likely to.