Idea: Add Thsrs to a Twitter App
Back in 2008 I launched Thsrs, an online Thesaurus that only returns synonyms shorter than your search query. It was intended for Twitter users who are having trouble staying under 140 characters. It’s still used frequently by a small group of people — a typical busy day sees a few hundred lookups — and I hear from copy editors who tell me how useful it is when they’re trying to write headlines. But I haven’t really done much with it since the launch.
In the meantime, a lot of Twitter apps have emerged with competing features and styles. But as far as I know, nobody has integrated a similar feature in their product. It would be a great tool to have while you’re actually composing a tweet.
So I’m putting this idea out there for any Twitter client who wants to use it, but I’m specifically looking at you, Tweetbot. Add Thsrs to your app so that while I’m in the middle of writing a tweet, I can just highlight the term, tap “Thsrs…” (or whatever you want to call it in your implementation), and get a list of synonyms shorter than the word I’ve highlighted.
I don’t actually know if the iOS API allows for custom features in the copy/paste/etc popup dialogue. But if it doesn’t, I’m sure you can find some other clever way of integrating it. Maybe a Thsrs button on the compose screen next to all those other gear/tag/camera/etc icons?
