Shitter
Tweets on toilet paper
Truly, we live in a golden age. We’re planning missions to Mars, people can print in 3D in their homes, and it’s easy, no matter who you are, to broadcast your innermost thoughts to millions of people in seconds. It’s worth noting however, that nearly all of those thoughts are shit.
The idea for Shitter formed between myself and then creative partner David Gillespie, while taking a break between client briefs. We formed a company, talked to toilet paper manufacturers, recruited production and technical partners Jony Mair and Ian Ha, and developed Shitter, the most disposable form of social media imaginable.
It allowed you to print anyone’s Twitter stream to rolls of custom toilet paper.
Exploding overnight with global news coverage, the site received over 1.2 million unique visitors in 48 hours. Articles were written up by publications all over the net, from Mashable to Time. I was even on breakfast television talking about it, for which I’m sure my mother was very proud.
Once the idea was out there, we knew we had to make it a reality. However we didn’t want to be in the toilet paper business forever, and at $35 for a 4 pack, it wasn’t ever intended to make us rich. Once we’d shipped orders to companies like Twitter and Facebook themselves, we decided it was time to retire extremely early and closed down production. Maybe it’ll be back one day. It does make the perfect gift for social media managers at Christmas.
