13th May 2008
Managing the ebb and Follow on Twitter
Twitter started as people just sharing. Twitter users love the simplicity of the app (which is why there wasn’t a mass exodus to the feature-rich Jaiku), but often want for more in terms of features (grouping people, following memes, tags). At the same time, and as with anything web and popular, people specializing in The Sell have realized that there’s massive amounts of useful data to farm for money. Slowly over time, people have been taking advantage of the Twitter API (Application Program Interface) to build external things that do what they want Twitter to do, the way they want Twitter to do it.
I found this post from an online marketing blog by way of a new mutual follower on Twitter, and gave it a quick read. The interesting angle of the post is getting information you need to help your business, and how you may be able to outsmart your competition by using the tools intelligently. It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that. Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.
Of the five tools outlined, I’m really interested in:
- Summize:  May be the Twitter search people have been looking for. I do love Twemes (I included it in the interesting experiment with hashtags for the PLA Blog during the national conference), Summize doesn’t require any tagging, it just searches tweets. The advanced search is Google-esque, including options to find tweets with links, positive/negative tones, questions, and more. Something exciting to play with. Heck, I might start searching proactively for questions and answering them.
- Twitt(url)y: All about tracking URL-based memes without needing to follow “the right people” on Twitter. The most tweeted sites are at the top, each listing includes the popular link and recent tweets. See what the Twitterati are reading and talking about, catch memes faster, learn about new things sooner, especially if your following group tends to be a bit… insular.
- Twistori: Reminds you of the humanity of most of Twitter (you know, the part that isn’t trying to sell you something as of late). Totally anonymous — unless you’re like Chris Brogan (nice new brand, btw, totally you) and follow so many people that you might recognize some of this stuff ;D — Twistori grabs data from Summize and lists out tweets that include “I love/hate/think/feel/believe/wish” statements and scrolls the new posts one by one on the screen.
Other things of note I’ve found in my travels:
- Twitter Answers: Um, why didn’t librarians build this? Are we so obsessed with how broken our catalogs are that we’re missing the easy stuff like this? If you’re a librarian playing around on Twitter Answers, do let me know. It’s a sort of Twitter MetaFilter, built by Mosio, a service that allows people to text message a question and get answers from “real people” (where were librarians for this, too?). Granted, when I work the Information Desk at my library, I tweet that I’m taking questions, and the answers I send out count towards my stats, and I know a few other librarians, like self-proclaimed guerilla librarian Connie Crosby, who do also. But this is a whole application answering questions where people are. I don’t have an account yet (I haven’t had time), but I’ll get on that soon, likely. Librarians should consider this a form of outreach to let people know that librarians can answer questions like this.
- My Tweeple: Another mutual follower, Shannon Whitley, is working on one of a few new whitelist/blacklist apps for Twitter, and I kinda like this one. When you’re receiving 10-50 new follower notifications a day, it can get quite unruly trying to figure out who everyone is. Since most Twitter spammers pick up names from other large Following lists, it’s helpful to block spammers, but knowing who the spammers are is the trick. My Tweeple helps with that.
It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves. Just take a look at the Twitter Fan Wiki, and you’ll see all the informational ruckus such an elegantly simple yet wonky system has created. And this isn’t even touching the Twitter Packs concept (the online marketing post mentions sites that do the same “figure out who to follow” stuff mechanically), it’s a whole other ball of wax!
Twitter started as people just sharing. Twitter users love the simplicity of the app (which is why there wasn’t a mass exodus to the feature-rich Jaiku), but often want for more in terms of features (grouping people, following memes, tags). At the same time, and as with anything web and popular, people specializing in The Sell have realized that there’s massive amounts of useful data to farm for money. Slowly over time, people have been taking advantage of the Twitter API (Application Program Interface) to build external things that do what they want Twitter to do, the way they want Twitter to do it.
I found this post from an online marketing blog by way of a new mutual follower on Twitter, and gave it a quick read. The interesting angle of the post is getting information you need to help your business, and how you may be able to outsmart your competition by using the tools intelligently. It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that. Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.
Of the five tools outlined, I’m really interested in:
- Summize:  May be the Twitter search people have been looking for. I do love Twemes (I included it in the interesting experiment with hashtags for the PLA Blog during the national conference), Summize doesn’t require any tagging, it just searches tweets. The advanced search is Google-esque, including options to find tweets with links, positive/negative tones, questions, and more. Something exciting to play with. Heck, I might start searching proactively for questions and answering them.
- Twitt(url)y: All about tracking URL-based memes without needing to follow “the right people” on Twitter. The most tweeted sites are at the top, each listing includes the popular link and recent tweets. See what the Twitterati are reading and talking about, catch memes faster, learn about new things sooner, especially if your following group tends to be a bit… insular.
- Twistori: Reminds you of the humanity of most of Twitter (you know, the part that isn’t trying to sell you something as of late). Totally anonymous — unless you’re like Chris Brogan (nice new brand, btw, totally you) and follow so many people that you might recognize some of this stuff ;D — Twistori grabs data from Summize and lists out tweets that include “I love/hate/think/feel/believe/wish” statements and scrolls the new posts one by one on the screen.
Other things of note I’ve found in my travels:
- Twitter Answers: Um, why didn’t librarians build this? Are we so obsessed with how broken our catalogs are that we’re missing the easy stuff like this? If you’re a librarian playing around on Twitter Answers, do let me know. It’s a sort of Twitter MetaFilter, built by Mosio, a service that allows people to text message a question and get answers from “real people” (where were librarians for this, too?). Granted, when I work the Information Desk at my library, I tweet that I’m taking questions, and the answers I send out count towards my stats, and I know a few other librarians, like self-proclaimed guerilla librarian Connie Crosby, who do also. But this is a whole application answering questions where people are. I don’t have an account yet (I haven’t had time), but I’ll get on that soon, likely. Librarians should consider this a form of outreach to let people know that librarians can answer questions like this.
- My Tweeple: Another mutual follower, Shannon Whitley, is working on one of a few new whitelist/blacklist apps for Twitter, and I kinda like this one. When you’re receiving 10-50 new follower notifications a day, it can get quite unruly trying to figure out who everyone is. Since most Twitter spammers pick up names from other large Following lists, it’s helpful to block spammers, but knowing who the spammers are is the trick. My Tweeple helps with that.
It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves. Just take a look at the Twitter Fan Wiki, and you’ll see all the informational ruckus such an elegantly simple yet wonky system has created. And this isn’t even touching the Twitter Packs concept (the online marketing post mentions sites that do the same “figure out who to follow” stuff mechanically), it’s a whole other ball of wax!
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