What if the worst possible text messages you could receive were delivered as singing telegrams? We decided to use an app that turns text into song to find out.
Ditty is a new app that rides on top of Facebook’s Messenger app, and takes whatever messages you write and attempts to crush them into the melody of a popular tune like, “Another One Bites the Dust” or Handel’s “Hallelujah”.
We are a bunch of clowns, so we took an early build of the app and forced it to sing terrible things. These are the messages you really, really don’t want to get, much less sung with elation.
The app is really dumb but in the best possible way. Figuring out just how to write a message so that Ditty’s algorithm stuffs it into a song’s melodic template just right is a challenge. It’s a bit like you’re doing Weird Al’s bit, but instead of singing the songs yourself, you’ve got to rely on a dumb computer. The results don’t always end up the way you expected, but when you nail the phrasing, it’s so, so, so satisfying.
Ditty drops today for iOS and Android shortly after the end of Facebook’s F8 conference keynote. That’s not a coincidence; Ditty is one of the first apps that will be available for Facebook’s new Messenger platform. Basically, the new platform allows all manner of apps to integrate with the platform. In this case, the short video with the sung message can be sent to any of you Facebook friends. (If you’re not a Facebook user, you can also download the little movie, and do whatever you please with it.)
This could be the future: Break up texts sung to you by your phone. That’s progress.
Video: Michael Hession