Tweet What You Eat was just featured on Good Morning America in a segment called ‘Tweet Yourself Thin’ which positions sites like Tweet What You Eat, where you share your eating habits and weight online, as the “humiliation diet.” You can watch the clip here.

We at Tweet What You Eat have worked hard to create a simple tracking tool and support community for those who are looking to track their eating habits online, get nutritional advice and lose weight. TWYE’s open food diaries were designed to allow people to stay accountable for what they eat by sharing their food diaries with friends and or nutritionist. The open food diaries also allow users to browse other food diaries for meal and snack ideas.

While we loved the press, we’d love to get your take on things. Is Tweet What You Eat a ‘humiliation diet,’ an online weight loss tool, a support community, or…? Share your experience in the comments below.

Over the last few months we have been working on new functionality to enhance the Tweet What You Eat! experience while also working to maintain its acclaimed simplicity.

In parallel with this development, we’ve been working on a redesign. We’re ready to share our efforts in the hope of collecting some valuable feedback from users like you. We’re very happy with the new look and we hope you are too! Please have a look and post your feedback in the comments below.

Summer’s right around the corner and Tweet What You Eat has some exciting summer internships. If you’re passionate about diet, weight-loss, technology, product development and/or lifetracking, then an internship with Tweet What You Eat might be the right experience for you! Help contribute to TWYE’s success and affect change in people’s lives this summer. Below is an overview of the opportunities:

Marketing and Advertising:

Tweet What You Eat recently launched a pilot program for advertisers that offers a unique mix of marketing opportunities that can’t be found elsewhere on the web. Advertisers on Tweet What You Eat get more then just a banner placement on a highly targeted, niche site - they get access to TWYE’s Twitter audience for promotional purposes, editorial placements in the forum and a spot in TWYE’s new email digest.

As a marketing intern at TWYE, you’ll create marketing materials for Tweet What You Eat, identify and solicit prospective advertiser,s and measure campaign success to help refine the advertising offering on the site as well as provide case studies.

Technology - Rails Developer

Tweet What You Eat is looking for a talented Rails developer to help bring new features to TWYE! If you like playing with code, we can keep you busy for some exciting project. You must know and have demonstrable experience with: the Twitter API, HAML, HTML, CSS, Rails, ActiveMerchant, rspec/Cucumber and jQuery. As a Rails developer working with Tweet What You Eat, you’ll own technology decisions, write tests, refactor code and code new features including building a premium offering. If you’ve ever wanted to take the reigns and go - this is your opportunity.

Community Manager

Do you know about diet and weight loss? Are you a positive person who can offer support, guidance and encouragement to those who need it? Do you have strong written and communication skills? If so, put your skills to work in the Tweet What You Eat community! As Community Manager, you’ll moderate the forum, send tips and curated content through TWYE’s Twitter account of over 20,000 followers, write and send emails to TWYE’s mailing and work to define product features.

If you’re interested in any of these roles, please email alex@tweetwhatyoueat.com with a CV or resume, the position you’re interested in and why you’re interested and we’ll get back to you! TWYE is based out of New York City, but remote arrangements will be considered for the right candidates.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Let’s start with performance. Many of you have been suffering through long load times on the Tweet What You Eat! hompage. Those days are over (for now at least). We’ve improved performance on the homepage and will be addressing other site sections as well in the near future. Thank you for all of your patience. We know things have been slow and we’re on the path to fixing it. Now on to the fun stuff!

• We just launched an iPhone app - YES, Apple has just approved Tweet What You Eat’s iPhone app which is now available in the App Store. The TWYE iPhone app is a simple Twitter client that makes constructing your food diary entries easy. It also supports the ability to take pictures of the foods you eat and post them to your TWYE food diary! The app was made possible by our friends at Newcastle University in the UK, so a big thanks to the team there for getting this out. We look forward to your feedback! Read more about it.

• A picture is worth 1,000 words, so take one! - You may have noticed the new column in your food diary labeled “pic.” Tweet What You Eat! now supports picture posting of the foods you eat through your favorite Twitter photo service such as Twitpic, yFrog and Tweetphoto. SImply include a photo link from one of the afeorementioned picture services in your Twitter message to TWYE and we’ll parse it out and display it in your diary. The TWYE iPhone app makes this easy, so download the app and give it a shot. Here’s an example of a Twitter post with picture that will get parsed:

  d twye ham and cheese, apple, chocolate milk - http://www.tweetphoto.com/a5C68

• Posting publicly - many of you have probably tried posting to @twye versus ‘d twye’ and wondered, “why isn’t this working?” Posting to @twye has never worked because we’ve wanted to leave @twye as a way to communicate with us (we the people who run Tweet What You Eat). Instead, if you want your food diary entries to appear in the public timeline, include the #twye hashtag and we’ll pick it up and put it in your food diary.

• Notifications for forum activity - Have you ever posted to the TWYE forum and wondered whether or not your post has gotten a response? Chances are the answer is yes. You can now opt-in to receive email notifications when any forum topic you’re active on receives a comment - not just the ones you’ve posted but the one’s you’ve responded to as well. Activate the setting from the TWYE Forum by clicking the checkbox in the right column.

• TWYE has been mobilized! - Blackberry users, iPhone users, Android users, we now have a mobile version of the site! It’s iPhone optimized at the moment so we’d love feedback from users on other platforms like Blackberry and Android as to what the experience looks like, but by far it will be better then before. Check out www.tweetwhatyoueat.com from your mobile device and let us know what you think of the new mobile site.

That’s is for now, enjoy the new changes, and please let us know your thoughts. Enjoy an improved TWYE!

Notice anything different? Team Tweetwhatyoueat has just completed a long anticipated redesign and we’re ready for your feedback! TWYE 2.0 is a complete redesign of the Tweetwhatyoueat service aimed at making your diet and weight tracking easier, faster and more fun. As part of the redesign, we’ve added a topic-based forum - the first step in connecting the TWYE user community around the foods they eat, goals they keep and all their food and diet interests.

Check out the new Tweetwhatyoueat here: http://www.tweetwhatyoueat.com.

You can start using the new Tweetwhatyoueat today! Simply enter your Twitter login on the homepage to create a new food diary, or if you’re a returning user, login with your Twitter account to access your existing food diary.

Here’s a run-down of some of the great new features in TWYE 2.0:

Easier Access

• Login to Tweetwhatyoueat using your existing Twitter account - use your Twitter login to access your Tweetwhatyoueat food diary.
• Add entries directly from your food diary - add food entries directly through your Tweetwhatyoueat food diary through the new diary entry form

Better performance

• Faster load times - Tweetwhatyoueat’s redesign includes code improvements making the site faster to load

Cleaner look

• New branding, cleaner look, improved design - ‘nuff said, we believe in the new look and feel!

New features

• Community forum - connect with other Tweetwhatyoueat users around food and support-based topics in the Forum
• Do Note Eat list - not proud of something you’re eating? Post it to your Do Not Eat list and track how many times you’ve eaten that food or share it on the Forum with other members of the community. Perhaps they have some alternative suggestions?

The beta period will last approximately one week after which the new TWYE 2.0 will be accessible at Tweetwhatyoueat.com. Take this time to get familiar with the new interface and post your comments about the design on the forum. We look forward to your feedback and we hope you enjoy the new Tweetwhatyoueat.

Thank you for your support in making Tweetwhatyoueat the easiest food diary you’ll ever keep. We look forward to your feedback!

-Alex Twitter: @aressidi

Tweetwhatyoueat is taking the first step towards a site redesign by having the Tweetwhayoueat logo refreshed. We’ve chosen to hold a design contest, awarding the best logo design and badge art for display on our Twitter page $250 cash. The contest is being held by 99designs and so far we have received 13 submissions, all of have been good. You can see all the current design submissions here: http://99designs.com/contests/11943

Help judge the submissions or submit one of your own!

Have you written in with feedback on the TWYE design in the past? Do you have a critical eye? Are you an active TWYE user with an opinion? This is your opportunity to provide feedback and shape the future design of Tweetwhatyoueat. Your vote counts!

Take a look at the contest page here. Add your comments on design submissions by referencing the design # on the contest page in your comments. Hurry though, the contest ends in 6 days.

The contest page has design all the design requirements from our team here. We want a logo that’s fun, has character, and gives a slight nod back to Twitter which has made the Tweetwhatyoeuat application possible. Feel free to share your ideas, critiques of the design submissions so far, and suggestions for imagery to try as part of the logo below in the comments. We will get the feedback to the designers working on the logo.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Team TWYE has been working furiously through the summer heat to bring weight tracking to Tweetwhatyoueat. A new “Weight” tab will soon be added to your diary allowing you to post, and privately view your weight entries as easily as you post food entries on TWYE today. Below is a screenshot of the new Weight tab. Your diary will now have two tabs allowing you to toggle between food entries and weight entries (food tab show active).



Posting a new weight entry is easy! Here are some syntax examples.

• ‘d twye #170’ weigh-in at 170 pounds
• ‘d twye #171 - couldn’t keep my hands out of the cookie jar’ weigh-in at 171 pounds with optional comment! Add a comment to your entry by using a dash “-” followed by the comment text

Weight entries are broken up by month and display the: date/time of your entry, the weight value in Kilos or Pounds, and an optional comment about the weight entry.

A new setting under Edit Settings will allow you to choose your preferred unit of measure for weight entries - Kilos or Pounds.

A few other quick things of note:

1. Weight entries will not appear on the homepage. Rest assured
2. People viewing your diary will only see food entries, not your weight entries

The target release date for weight tracking is end of July. Please feel free to post comments/questions about the functionality below. Any other ideas for weight-related syntax are welcome!

Tweetwhatyoueat is putting the finishing touches on some exciting new changes to bring you an improved, one-of-a-kind food diary experience with unparalleled ease of use. We’ve added this News section to keep you informed of the upcoming changes. Here’s what’s in store for the new Tweetwhatyoueat!

• Sticky Food Profiles – Anytime you enter calories for a food in your diary, TWYE will remember that value and automatically apply it to all subsequent entries. We call these “Sticky food profiles.” You can override the profile on an individual basis by editing an entry directly.
• Zero calorie, calorie look-ups – Enable the new “use food profiles” setting and TWYE will automatically try and match uncaloried foods in your diary with calorie entries submitted by other users. It’s calorie crowd sourcing and it’s a first, only from Tweetwhatyoueat.

Below is a sneak peak of how your diary will look when the new “use food profiles” setting is on. “n/a” entries in your diary will be auto-filled with calorie amounts if someone else in the community has eaten that food and assigned it a calorie value.

Clicking the calorie amount opens the food profile dialogue (as seen above) revealing the available calorie profiles for that food. Profiles in the dialogue are weighted. Any profile submitted or selected by you appears at the top of the list and is designated with a “me” icon. Profiles are then ranked by the number of users using them.

The calorie value of the active profile is shown in-line in your diary. If you haven’t selected or submitted a profile directly using the food profile dialogue, the highest ranked food profile will be used by default when the setting is activated. You can always select an alternate food profile from the dialogue at any point by clicking it. This will retroactively apply the profile to all previous entries for that food.

We’d love to hear from you about these changes so please post your questions and comments.