Skitter

I’m telling you, this is going to be the NEXT BIG THING! It’s a new social media tool. Wait! You’re probably thinking you don’t need another social media tool. Let me point out that we all said the same thing about Twitter, Blogger, Email, Xerox, mimeograph, television, radio, chain letters, etc. We didn’t need them until after we had them. Okay, we don’t need chain letters, but you get my point.

I think I’ll call it Skitter. Skitter messages, called “squeaks,” are limited to just 13 characters — usually a single [often onomatopoeic] word. These are primal messages. Consider the grunts and groans of the cave people [or you last night, if you got lucky]. A single, monosyllabic expression, yet it contains tons of information. [If you do it right.] [Also, see how I put in those big words like onomatopoeic and monosyllabic to make this all high-brow and important sounding? Next big thing, I'm telling you.]

Here’s a short [and incomplete] list to get you started:

ack, ahhh, arf, bam, bang, bark, beep, belch, blah, bleat, boing, boo, boom, buzz, caw, chirp, clack, clang, clank, clatter, clink, clunk, crackle, crash, croak, cuckoo, doh, duh, eep, fizz, rump, groan, grunt, hack, hah, hiccup, hiss, ho, honk, hoot, huh, hush, jingle, kaakaa, meow, mmm-hhmmm, mmmmmmm, moan, mumble, no, noooo, oh, oooh, ouch, pindrop, plop, plink, plunk, pop, pow, purr, quack, rattle, ribbit, ring, rip, retch, roar, schwing, scrape, screech, sizzle, slurp, smack, snap, sniff, snort, splash, splat, sproing, sputter, squeak, squish, squirt, thud, tinkle, toot, twang, ugh, wave, way, whack, wham, wheeze, whine, whir, woof, whoop, uh-oh, zip, zoom

Plus, if you order now….

Well, I haven’t actually created Skitter or its interface [yet]. But just for fun I plan to schedule Skitter messages on Twitter this week. If you play along, I’ll collect tweets that use the #skitter hashtag and I’ll make a Wordle out of them. Are you with me?