I attached a file to a tweet!

I was reasoning about the Megaupload mess and the way other file sharing websites are closing their doors (see Filesonic) or are closing access to users from the U.S.

I then thought about online and digital piracy. It has always existed and I believe it will always exist. The FBI or other enforcement agencies can shut down a couple of sites, but sharing files is something deeply set into many people's mind. Users want to share what they have and they don't want (well, on average) to pay premium price for content. Content providers and copyright holders should just acknowledge this and try to find a way to revolutionize the idea of content distribution and its business model.

This also made me think about the way online piracy changed during the years. From the super old BBS, to Napster, then Kazaa, Torrents, etc. The way files were shared has changed drastically. First users would upload a file to a BBS and other users would download the same file. Then we had the P2P sharing, where users were downloading entire files directly from other users' HD. Then Bittorrent, where the file is split in chunks and users download these chunks from hundreds of other users. Finally, what seems to be the most popular way of online sharing today, users would upload their files on a server, get a link and share the link.

One way of sharing files which always fascinated me is the one used by Usenet. There, files are translated in alphanumerical characters, then uploaded to Usenet servers as messages. Clients detect these strange messages and decode them into the original file.

This gave me an idea on how people could use current blogging platform to share files and how even the super popular Twitter could be used for the same thing. This is where my experiment started.

I wanted to upload a file to Twitter. I took a JPEG file [1] and instead of just uploading it to Twitpic or other picture hosting services, I encoded the file in Base64 format using this online tool:

http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

In this way, I obtained 155 lines of 140 alphanumerical characters each.

I then pasted these lines into Excel, added a column for date and time, another one for my test Twitter user and I uploaded the CSV file into this website, which allows you to send scheduled tweets in bulk:

http://tweetingmachine.com

The result: I have uploaded my file through 155 tweets!!! (well, right now Tweetingmachine is still sending the bulk tweets, it will take some more minutes to complete the procedure).

http://twitter.com/#!/Justatest2099

Of course, this was a long procedure but it proves that this thing is totally doable. I am not a coder, therefore my test stops here but imagine if you had a Twitter client which detects the beginning and the end of this series of tweets and decode them automatically. You would have the sharing tool of the next century, eheheh!

This was fun! I hope you will find it interesting.

[1] As you will see, I have chosen a particular picture for this experiment. This does not mean I am part of Anonymous or any other piracy groups or that I support online piracy. I thought this could have been an emblematic picture to use for my test, in light of the recent events and the turmoil that piracy supporters have brought on Twitter and other blogging platforms.