Saving time is the name of the game. The internet is the place to be. That’s the goal of the Google+Tweet app by Bruno Barbieri, a 23-year-old software development student, which has already been downloaded by more than 100,000 users. The idea is that by logging into Google+, users can manage two social networks: the search engine’s platform and Twitter. Bruno notes that Agustín Haller, a friend of his and a Systems Engineering student, is collaborating on the development of this popular app.
The first step is learning. “Studying Software Engineering allows me to stay up to date with Internet-related technology. The program helped me formalize all the informal knowledge I had,” said the student. For Bruno, the most interesting courses were “Analysis and Programming Project” and “Software Engineering,” which “take you a bit away from the code and give you a broader view of how the market works; that opened my mind because it gave me the tools to face reality.” He also noted that—although it involves “a significant effort”—the program allows you to work and study at the same time.
The Origins
His work as a Web Developer requires that one of his fundamental tools be the Internet browser, so using Twitter and Google+ meant having two tabs open. The young man was inspired when an extension appeared on Facebook similar to the one he later developed; “I was curious about how it was made and thought I could program it for Google+.” The day Bruno created the app, he was suffering from insomnia, so he got up at 3 a.m., and by 9 a.m. that same day, the program he had created was already up and running; in fact, that very same day, “they kicked me off the hosting service (the server where the app was hosted) because of the volume of traffic it was getting, which they couldn’t handle,” he recalled.
The primary goal of Google+Tweet was to offer the ability to use both applications within the same framework (in this case, Google+); later, he added the option for posts on Google+ to automatically appear on Twitter.
Last year, Bruno attended the Google DevFest event, aimed at developers connected in some way to Google, alongside 50 other specialists from Uruguay, with whom he also forms the “Gtug’s” (Google Technology Users Group), a community of developers who use Google technologies to create products or services. The group’s coordinator (Gabriel Kouyoumdjian, a systems engineering student) informed all members about the app the student had created and its success, which had even been featured on the website of the U.S. news network CBS.
This news reached the tech giant Google, whose offices sent a congratulatory message to the student and invited him to participate in Developer Day, which will take place in Buenos Aires on September 19, 2011. "It all happened so fast. When I made it, I simply thought of a tool I needed for myself."
Other tools
A few years ago, the student had already created a set of applications for Twitter, called mytweetplace.com, which offers tools to improve the social network’s performance, such as the ability to check multiple Twitter accounts within a single session, or to tell the application what time you want to post a message (“tweet”) on the network. He also developed the website askboth.com, which allows users to view results from two of the most popular web search engines (Google and Microsoft’s Bing). “I developed it a week after Bing launched with the goal of being able to compare the results from both search engines.” The site is useful for those who do SEO work (improving a brand’s ranking in web search results) since it allows you to see at the same time how it ranks on both search engines.