Do you need to worry about what you post online and where the information is kept? Who sees it? Who might see it? What will happen if said groups see your post? Will the repercussions last long? Will the damage be overwhelming? These are probably questions you should be asking yourself whenever you throw information up online via any one of your favorite social media sites. Too often we probably post stuff without a care in the world, not thinking about the after effects, if there are any. It’s unfortunate, but that’s kinda the way things are as social media has become a hotspot for all your information, so if anyone wants to find anything out about you that is likely the first place they’ll look.
It doesn’t have to be this way though, and there are a few good ways you can make sure that the things you post online don’t last more than a short period of time. Snapchat is one application that may come to mind when thinking about posts that disappear. What about Twitter though? If you would have been asking this question little more than a month ago, the answer would have been no. There is no solution, at least not on Android. Your tweets are online and they’re there to stay. An app called Xpire however is aiming to change that and help you shrink your social footprint by letting you create self-destructing, timed tweets that will magically disappear after a certain period of time. Sometime down the road Xpire will also support Facebook and Tumblr posts as this feature is already available on the iOS version. For now though Android users are limited to Twitter.
Xpire even helps you determine whether or not you should be using it more often by giving you a way to calculate your Social Score to discover how much “potentially risky content” you share with others. Once you’re ready to create a “self-destructing” post, you can either tap the button that says “create post” or you can tap the message bubble button in the top right corner. After you have your tweet created, Xpire even warns you that your tweet may contain inappropriate content and asks you to confirm that you want to proceed. Before the post goes live you’re asked how much time you want to give it before it self-destructs, which starts at 1 minute and goes all the way up to 1 year. Of course, you can choose to let your tweets never expire too if it isn’t anything that could be viewed as harmful. Xpire also supports multiple social accounts, so once they support self-destructing Facebook and Tumblr posts on Android, you’ll be able to add those accounts in too. Xpire is a free app, and if you post to Twitter often we’d certainly recommend giving it a try.
