Always Late? Twist App Will Provide Friends With Your ETA

Time-challenged iPhone users can now push ETA updates to family, friends, and colleagues with the new Twist app, released today in the iTunes App Store.

Twist informs people of your expected arrival, but also brings others' schedules to you, eliminating uncertain wait times, and dirty looks from friends standing around while you are running late.

The app isn't intended to eliminate lateness, but instead to help people determine exactly when they need to be somewhere, based on calculated arrival times. Also, the creators are hoping to cut down on the number of people who text or email while driving – an admitted 24 percent – to let someone know they are on their way.

Twist was built out of CEO Bill Lee's personal frustrations.

"Dealing with the headache of coordinating hundreds of meetings a year as an angel investor led to the creation of Twist," he said in a statement. "Time is money and time wasted is not acceptable."

According to Twist, 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. population is consistently late, so, assuming that many of those folks own iPhones, the company can expect its app to perform well in the market.

A survey by Harris Interactive, conducted on behalf of Twist, showed that the leading cause of lateness is traffic or other transportation issues (53 percent), followed by underestimating travel time (38 percent) and simply getting lost (25 percent).

Solving timing issues is not something other companies have focused on, "because in order to properly compute all the data you need to process a tremendous amount of information in a split second," Twist CTO Mike Belshe said in a statement.

Additionally, the company had to develop proprietary methods of battery preservation and navigation through uncertain GPS data, he said.

In one small, and free, package, Twist combines the features of email, text, calendars, maps, traffic, photos, recommendations, and check-ins, the company said. No longer will a date be left alone at a restaurant wondering where you are, or you missing a movie because a friend was stuck in traffic.

The Twist team is made up of engineers from Google, Apple, MIT, and Stanford, as well as the founders of six companies sold in the last 12 years, a press release said. Co-founder Belshe was a member of the Google Chrome development team, while Lee is an active investor in Tesla Motors, TweetDeck, and Yammer.

Twist is now available for download in the Apple App Store.

To see how Twist works, watch the company's video below.