In an effort to lose weight before his own wedding, Alex Ressi, 33, launched TweetWhatYouEat.com in January 2008.

Unable to find a simple way to keep a food diary online, the New York-based developer created his own site that lets people keep a Twitter-based food diary by sending messages via mobile text or the Web.

Although people can choose to keep their messages private, by default the TweetWhatYouEat Web site broadcasts, in real-time, members’ messages about their meals and caloric intake. Now, the site has about 12,000 members, some of whom have lost 40 pounds, he said.

Ressi said the goal was to make users more aware of what they’re putting in their body. But he acknowledged that another force is also behind the site’s effectiveness: Shame.

“There is that component of shame,” he said. “Perhaps if your food diary is open and public, it may affect what you eat.”

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But If you’re tired of calorie counting, try eat stop eat lifestyle.

During the beta period, voice chats will be limited to two minutes on Twitter, the company Jajah said.

A new third-party offering from Jajah known as Jajah@call is expected to go into beta Thursday morning that will allow Twitter users to initiate a two-way voice chat with other users by typing “@call @username” — where “username” is someone’s Twitter ID — into any Twitter client.

During the beta period, the company said, the calls will be limited to two minutes, but the company will evaluate that length during beta. However, it sees the two minute period, after which the call will end, as “the verbal equivalent of a tweet.”

According to Jajah, an Internet communications provider with tens of millions of users, the service will allow a user to place a call to any other user, so long as the second person follows the first on Twitter and both have Jajah accounts.

The service is free to use and is expected to work on any Twitter-enabled device, from PCs to smart phones.

[ via CNN.com ]