Its not exactly original.

Back in the 1990s a bunch of us sysadmin types created an identical website where it graphed everyone's unix machine uptimes in a similar way (with variable length ePenises).

But back then, it wasn't twitter, it was just a small joke shared on IRC amongst friends. I had no idea back then we were 10 years ahead of the curve, and no idea that this sort of thing would reach global proportions and even start to be picked up and shown on TV.

The idea is crap, and there's very little future in it, but the lessons learned from it seem valid to a wide number of startups: find an influential champion to spread the word, make it easy to discover and use (a first time can measure their e-penis in a couple of seconds), and make it easy to share.

Its more of a viral marketing experiment. I have a strong disdain for viral marketing because instead of being able to ignore it your friends make you use the application.