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Twitter-Powered Broadband Video Application Pays Tribute to Michael Jackson

Submitted by tracyswedlow on June 28, 2009 - 11:14pm
in

Web development company, 9Astronauts, is paying tribute to Michael Jackson via a broadband video application that takes advantage of microblogging service Twitter's API, and that appears to have gone viral in the few days since its launch.

Dubbed Billie Tweets (and located at billietweets.com), the application presents visitors with an embedded YouTube video of what is arguably Jackson's most famous song, "Billie Jean." When visitors play the video, the song's lyrics appear in synch on the screen, interpreted through a string of random tweets, each of which contains one of the song's words (the application highlights the relevant word). The application is monetized by links at the bottom of the screen to Michael Jackson albums for sale on Amazon.com.

In a post on microblogging service, FriendFeed, 9Astronauts founder, Mike Demers (who, among other things, co-developed the Twitter-driven site, BlameDrewsCancer.com, which also went viral very quickly), said that he developed the application while taking "a break from packing up moving boxes."

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