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Felipe Coimbra is a simple man who has one goal for his collection of twitter tools he is developing: helping businesses use twitter, reach out to audience more effectively. We are not talking about follower-managing service, in fact, “Follower” is not in the dictionary of TwtApps.com, the mother-ship of Felipe’s apps big or small. Think about little things in our life before twitter: gift, pet, trip, friends, house parties etc. In fact, way before I started sailing in the deep sea of thousands of twitter apps, it was TwtApps win me over with its simplicity and elegance. I have since had TwtApp’s image in mind as a benchmark whenever I come across a new twitter app. To me, Felipe Coimbra, Founder/developer behind TwtApps.com, is a giant who is a master of small things. I decided to reach out to him for an email interview, hoping to get a glimpse of the mind of an “elegant” entrepreneur. Although short, I enjoyed it immensely. I’m sure you will too.

1. What are the goals of Twtapps?

Our goal is to help businesses to use Twitter to engage with their customers and to promote their services/products. To achieve this, we develop simple and useful business tools.

2. How did you come up with the idea? How’s your past background serve up this venture?

The initial idea was for one of our apps (Twtpoll). As a Twitter user, I saw people asking for feedback about their products without a way to easily combine all of the answers in one place. After developing twtpoll, I saw other needs and decided to create a set of tools to address them, and that’s how twtapps was born.

I was running another online business before and I was personally trying to use Twitter and other social media sites as a way to market my business. So, my experience as a business using Twitter helped me to see these needs.

3. How long did it take to bring each sub-idea to launch? Are you a full blown start up with funding or bootstrapping?

We develop a very basic version of each application and release it as fast as possible. They usually take about a week to develop. Then we do some marketing efforts and analyse feedbacks. If positive and the service seems to be getting traction, we add other features.

Twtapps is a one person bootstrapping startup based in Montreal, Canada.

4. How’s user adoption so far? Which are your favorite ones?

We have some apps that have been adopted very well, others not so well. Personally I like twtvite, because I like to meet and connect with the community locally and twtTRIP, because I like to travel (and my previous startup was related to travel, so I have some experience and ideas in the space). In terms of business, twtpoll can be very powerful in both gathering feedback and engaging with your customers.

5. Do you have business models for these apps?

Basic freemium model. All of the applications are free to use and we’ll be rolling out some premium services in the near future.

6. Future plan for TwtApps? Technology, business partnership, products etc.?

We have been in contact with a lot of potential partners for twtpoll, twtQpon and twtjobs. In general, we plan to develop a few more apps always with the vision to help businesses to use Twitter and social media more effectively. So, the next couple of months should be very interesting.