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Launched about May 1st, 2009 (only 11 days ago), TwitDoc is quickly getting attention from people all over the world, thanks to its first mover advantage in the twitter document-sharing space, its intuitive user experiences, TechCrunch’s positive report, and of course, the mother-ship of real time sharing: twitter.

We have seen over and over again that the derivative tools like twitDoc built on top of giants like twitter and Scribd are able to lead innovation one step ahead of giants themselves, see through the noises and keep the focus sharp. TwitDoc seems to aim at long term, sustainable value. Who are the masterminds behind it, what are the similarities between them and the master chess players who have the ability to anticipate all scenarios, keep focus, remain patient and ready to attack at all times? With all these questions, I “rang up” Bob Brinker out of Littleton, Colorado, determined to put him on the spot. Here it is, let’s “watch” what CEO/Founder of TwitDoc has to say:

1. How did you come up with the idea (a bit background information). Explain what twitdoc.com is; What is the current doc-sharing status on twitter, What is your vision for twitDoc?

Bob: I am an avid twitter user. In my world of finance, I create and see a lot of material in doc/xls form. I needed an easy way to share the info rather than doing the manual steps myself. for this reason, I wanted to create twitdoc. TwitDoc does 3 things in 1 EASY step: 1) upload a document 2) shorten the URL pointing to the document 3) post a ‘tweet’ with the shortened URL at the end. Other file sharing services I found are not twitter-centric. They open pages that ask you to download the document or require more clicking. I just want the tweet to open a ‘viewer’ of the files. This is why we upload to scribd. They handle quick/fast document viewing as well as anyone and their ipaper technology works well. There are lots of additions we can and will make to TwitDoc – but the central idea will always remain this: the EASY way to share documents on twitter.

2. How is your professional/personal background serving up this venture?
Bob: Mike and I have worked in technology in a variety of roles from coder to project mgr for more than 25 years combined. More recently, I have worked in the finance and publishing industry. Twitter is thriving in this field and changing the way we share information among our networks. Mike is the technology lead and I focus on business development and making sure we stick to specific vision for the product. I am already amazed at how many different ways people are using TwitDoc – sharing real estate, art, writing, PR/news, etc. we want to keep it open and let users drive how it is used. We’ll focus on keeping it simple to use and handling more and more types of files.

3. What is the core technology behind twitdoc? how long did it take you to launch the site. Are you bootstrapping or full blown start up with funding? How will it scale?
Bob: For starters, We are linux/php/my sql. It was a rapid development effort of less than one month once the coding began. Mike is a very skilled technologist and has done a great job getting it done quickly and in a manner that will scale easily. We should be able to scale rapidly since we rely on other services for document conversion/storage. We do not want to reinvent other sites that do a good job of document management. We want to be the pipeline for routing documents and files thru twitter smartly and focus on being the onramp onto twitter for sharing documents. We are bootstrapping for now – but we will likely switch to angel/vc funding in the near future – unless we are acquired.

4. It’s still early, but based on your experiences, who would be the people who actually use twitdoc? Are they mainly scribd userbase?

Bob: Our users all over the world both geographically and by subject matter – but here are some real examples:
- Conferences / small group meetings / agendas
- Thesis / publication / math teacher / researcher / literature professor
- People selling stuff, financial advice, antique book dealer, gardening supplies
- Technical / financial / statistics: people with serious jobs that require reaching out to colleagues
+ financial
+ natural resources
+ medical
+ patent
- Political
- Gaming
+ Football pools
+ Horseracing picks
- Amateur artists posting cartoons and other artwork, photographers: amateur and pro
- Pets
- Recipes

Some of our initial challenges were dealing with worldwide character sets. it is extremely humbling to see the letters ‘TwitDoc’ appear in tweets in languages you cannot understand and character sets you’ve never seen before. honestly, i love watching the live ‘TwitDoc’ search stream on twitter now

5. If there is one thing, what is it that you think will be the key to twitdoc’s success?
Bob: I think we must get integrated into the major twitter clients. tweetdeck, twhirl, tweetie, etc. We are trying – but these folks are inundated with requests so it takes time. We are also going to make it VERY EASY for websites to integrate TwitDoc themselves – either via our open API or our simple drop-in scripts.

6. What is the business model?
Bob: Our initial focus is on speed, reliability, and establishing the TwitDoc brand. Once we establish TwitDoc as THE way to share docs, we will shift more into longer term strategy. I could see a variety of firms being interested in acquiring us once we establish the brand. also we’ll be able to earn revenue from ads and enhanced services.

7. How’s growth prospect for twitdoc and what kind of future plans are in the work? Technology, Partnership, product offering..etc
Bob: Its very early – we launched about 10 days ago – but we are already amazed at the acceptance by twitter users. our ToDo list is growing quickly and we’ll go wherever our users take us. Here is what we are adding: expanding and simplifying our API as needed, e-mail interface so that users can EMAIL their documents to us with a Subject (tweet) and we’ll publish the file, shorten the URL, and send the subject(tweet) to twitter, web developer tools that make is EASY to integrate TwitDoc on your website/blog.

8. Anything else you want to share with the world?
Yes – just one thing – please pass along to your twitter friends that TwitDoc.com is the EASY way to share your documents on Twitter