How Cool Is This? MuniFail.com Lets You Tweet Newsom When Muni Makes You Late To Work.

munifailart.jpgTwitter can really give you the important news, fast, sometimes. This morning I turned on Echofon for MacOS, and saw that an enterprising Muni rider has created a rather awesome single serving site called MuniFail.com.
The site is brilliant for its simplicity – if you’re late to work because Muni had a big ol’ fail, you simply click on the button that says “Tell GAVIN” and you can send a message via Twitter to him (and you can add a little commentary too if you like.) It’s so simple, and so brilliant, it has that “why didn’t I think of that” feel that means it’s a cool idea.
I sent a direct message to the author of the site and will post more later. For now, use it as often as you need to. Perhaps the intern monitoring his Twitter account will be so freaked out they’ll go running into the Mayor’s office, screaming “make them stop make them stop!” and well, something will happen.
UPDATE:I got in touch with Mike Monteiro, the creator of the site, and did a short email interview with him here:
What is your name, and what Muni routes do you tend to use around SF?

My name is Mike Monteiro. I live around the Church and Market area, where a ton of routes congregate. But mostly it’s the N to work. Or the F down Market if I’m looking for a romantic experience of climbing over a passed out meth head on a well-crafted vehicle of yesteryear.
What inspired you to come up with the idea?

Sitting in a tunnel, getting later and later for work, realizing that it was taking me 30 minutes to go 3 miles. Again. I started writing angry tweets to Gavin Newsom. And since this was happening on a regular basis, any good monkey with a tool starts looking for a way to automate a routine task, right? So my friend, David McCreath, and I threw this up in about an hour.
What do you hope will happen as people use your site to express their frustration with Muni?

Honestly, my only goal is for the system to get better. The default tweet it sends out is purposely benign. I’d rather generate volume than vitriol. Hopefully, if enough people let the mayor know how this bad service is affecting them he’ll be forced to fly back into town and at least address it.
What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while riding Muni?

This one was tough, but I’m gonna go with the the old man cutting his toenails next to the metallic painted pier 39 mime eating a sandwich.
Anything else you’d want our readers to know?

Please, for the love of God, let me exit before you try to board. It will end so badly some day. And enjoy our other site: http://hasgavinnewsomresignedyet.com/

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6 Responses to How Cool Is This? MuniFail.com Lets You Tweet Newsom When Muni Makes You Late To Work.

  1. susan says:

    Can it also twitter all the supervisors? They can have a huge impact if they cared about Muni too!

  2. Greg Dewar says:

    That could work, but I don’t know that all the Supervisors are on Twitter. Nor do I know would I want them all to be, either, except Daly and a few others that at least are entertaining.

  3. julie says:

    I love that sparklecorn image. I loved this interview. I think you and Mike need to run our fair city before we all lose our sense of humor.

  4. Greg Dewar says:

    @Jeff Tidwell: belated high frakking FIVE!

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