I’ve Built a Twitter Bot and Its Task Is to Do Nothing

Well not exactly. It does one really important thing:

It’s there for me.

It’s there for me when I find something interesting on Twitter and want to save it for later. Of course, there are a few solutions to solve this problem (like Pocket and many other services), but I wanted something simpler. Something baked into Twitter itself and no another 3rd party service. Something quick and easy like Facebook’s “Save” feature. It has to work with Twitter’s official apps and its web client. And I don’t want to use additional apps or browser extensions.

Introducing @laterbot 🤖

Basically I wanted to extend Twitter without having the chance, authority and tools to extend Twitter 😅.

I had to use existing platform features and use them for my needs. The solution is so simple, that the basic functionality doesn’t even use one single line of code.

So how does it work?

Laterbot is built upon a new Twitter messaging feature introduced in April. If you want to save a Tweet for later, just tap the Message button and share it with @laterbot. That’s it.

All your saved content is listed chronologically in the Messages section of Twitter after choosing the conversation with @laterbot. Clicking on an individual message brings you directly to the saved Tweet. You can then like it, retweet it or open the link. If you’re done with the saved Tweet, just longpress and select “Delete message”. Done.

To recap:

• I wanted something simple, easy and quick: ✅
• It has to be baked into Twitter: ✅
• No 3rd party service: ✅
• It has to work with Twitter’s apps and web client: ✅
• No additional apps or browser extensions: ✅

I’ve been using this solution for the past couple of months and it suits my needs perfectly. So I wanted to share this workflow with the world. Use it, it’s free.