Social Media Sobriety Test: Boulder's Webroot tests if you're too drunk to Facebook, Twitter

A Flickr photo.

Remember when, after one too many tequila shots, you confessed your undying love all over your ex's Facebook wall? Or how you posted a YouTube vid of a certain projectile-vomiting incident right after it happened? Or how your drunken tweets ended up on Text From Last Night -- three times in one day? It never has to happen again thanks to Boulder-based Webroot's Social Media Sobriety Test -- a breathalyzer for Twitter, Facebook and more.

While Webroot made its name (and a fortune) hunting down computer viruses, it's generating quite a stir thanks to its new security program -- one that protects your dignity from inebriated online self-immolation. How does it work? Download the app, set which programs you want the program linked to (such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Tumblr, Gmail and Hotmail) and the hours of the day you're most likely to be sloshed. (Here's a tip: If you set your likely to be drunk hours to start earlier than 8 p.m., you have bigger problems than just a few social-media faux pas.)

Then, when your personal witching hour rolls around, the Social Media Sobriety Test won't let you into your sites without passing a sobriety test, such as keeping your cursor inside a moving circle or typing the alphabet backwards. (Full disclosure: I failed the backwards-alphabet test completely sober.)

If you pass, you'll be allowed to twitter the night away. If you fail, however, you'll be strongly encouraged to go to bed -- as well as given the option to have the sobriety test alert everyone that you're too drunk to post right now. Of course, that last option sort of defeats the purpose -- but if you're too drunk to pass the test, you're also likely too drunk to figure that out.

Check out an example below:

Social Media Sobriety Test from TDA_Boulder on Vimeo.

More from our Tech archive: "Unfriending: Facebook study shows that posting unimportant stuff too often drives users up wall."