Including 'Shared by <NAME>'

[wilsonpage]

I've often thought it would be nice to not just see what was being broadcast, but who it was being broadcast by.

There are lot's of complex ways of doing this, but lying awake last night I think I came up with a super simple way.

When a URL is broadcast the broadcaster could append their twitter username (other platforms could follow) to the URL before shortening.

https://example.com/?magnettwitteruser=wilsonpage

When our metadata-service fetches the shortened URL it can check the final URL for this particular parameter and return the username to client. A quick ping to the Twitter API could give us the avatar and real name from the username, and we'd be able to show:

"Shared by Wilson Page"

And on press, be able to link back to their profile. This could result in new followers, which gives a small incentive for broadcasting content.

[wilsonpage]

As we begin to explore broadcasting tools/products this parameter could automatically be appended to shared URLs (given we know their Twitter username) to make this simple and more widely used.