How to Post Tweets That Self Destruct Within a Specified Time

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If you’ve watched James Bond movies, then most of his instruction notes and gadgets self-destruct. Well, the same self-destructing possibilities have now come to Twitter, all thanks to a new web app.

But some of you may wonder why would you want your tweets to be deleted after a certain time? No one pays attention to your tweets after a day, so why worry about deleting them? Well, sometimes you might want to post something that’s related to a certain time or period, and that tweet might not be valid after that period.

Also Twitter keeps a record of all your tweets, and you might not want certain tweets to be seen by someone after a month or two. Of course you shouldn’t post anything that you’re not comfortable with, but sending a timely tweet update makes sense for many.

Enter Efemr, a simple web app that will delete your tweets automatically after the specified time. Efemr is so simple to use that once you learn using it, you won’t forget it easily. You just need to go to efemr.com, and then login with your Twitter account. Once you’ve authorized this app to access your account, you can then use special hashtags that will delete your tweet once it reaches that time.

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You don’t even need to visit the efemr website any more; and you would simply need to post your tweet as you normally do, just add a minute or hour hashtag to it. E.g. This tweet will self destruct in #5m. This “#5” means 5 minutes, you can also schedule it to delete the tweet in certain hours like “#3h” for 3 hours. Likewise, the possibilities are endless. In short, when you’re composing the tweet, just mention the time you want to self destruct the tweet in.

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While this app works great, it won’t exactly delete your tweets within your specified time. Sometimes it will take more time to delete it. Efemr says “Due to the different time zones and third party servers response time, efemr may not be able to delete tweets at the exact time chosen. There may be a delay of approximately 1 to 3 minutes.”

Efemr also keeps a record of all your deleted tweets, so that you can still access them from its interface. There’s the tweet creation date and retweet button, just in case if you want to retweet it. But this retweet button doesn’t let you edit the tweet before posting, which means that the tweet will be again deleted in your specified time.

Also let’s say if you post something and somone retweets it before it self destructs, then there’s nothing you can do about it. Your original tweet will be deleted, but your retweeted tweet will still be there, and it won’t be deleted, ever. That’s why, if you don’t want your tweet online, then simply don’t post it. In the end, it’s you that will need to take the decision, whether you want to use Efemr or not.

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