Efemr: this tweet will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3, 2….

Ever wished your tweets would self-destruct after a set period of time? No? Well apparently some people do and that’s where Efemr comes in.

The web app allows you to set a time-limit on how long people can see your tweets for. The company behind the app claims that it allows you to “control your reputation better, protect your privacy and sharing humorous fleeting moments”.

We only really buy the last of those. After all, it only takes a couple of retweets and quotes and any sense of reputation protection flies out the window. As for privacy, well Twitter’s not exactly the best place to go looking for it.

A more likely explanation, as The Verge points out, is that Efemr is trying to bring some of the elements that have made Snapchat so popular to Twitter.

The web app is fairly simple. Once you’ve given it access to your account, you just add a hashtag with the amount of time you want the tweet to stay visible for. Typing #16 would get you 16-minutes for instance while #16h would mean that your tweet would be visible for 16 hours.

It’s an interesting idea but, while there can be no denying the popularity of erasable social messages, we’re not sure it works on Twitter. The nature of the medium means that you want maximum exposure for your tweets. And if you’re thinking that you might like a tweet deleted as you’re typing it, it’s probably best not to send it out in the first place.