5 ms·

Show HN: How much can you tell about someone from their tweets?

33 points by jmacd 13y ago

pykler 13y ago
The LeadSift Fingerprint uncovers details about Twitter users such as the following: · Do you have a pet? · Are you male or female? · Are you interested in sports, fashion technology, business, etc? · Is this a corporate or a personal account? · Are you married? · Are you a parent? · Do you own a car? · Do you own a home? · Are you employed? · What is your profession? more info here ... http://www.prlog.org/12237661-leadsift-announces-social-media-fingerprint-to-provide-consumers-insight-into-social-media-identity.html http://www.prlog.org/12237661-leadsift-announces-social-medi... Disclaimer: I work @leadsift
Kronopath 13y ago
Why does this need access to my Twitter account to run? Can't it just get the publicly-facing information from the Twitter API?
- pykler 13y ago
  it uses your oauth to do the twitter search. It only looks at public facing info, but due to the amount of traffic we are getting each user needs to use their twitter account to get tweets. Once you grab the info though we cache it so you can share it freely without having to login. Check out mine for example http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=pykler http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=pykler
- dustyreagan 13y ago
  All Twitter API methods require authentication now-a-days. https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api
  - poopicus 13y ago
    Why don't they authenticate with their own Twitter account? I'm not sure why they would need mine.
    - sreejata 13y ago
      The Twitter API calls are rate limited and it would be impossible to handle any meaningful traffic.
    - subv3rsion 13y ago
      Feels like click bait to me. They could use their own authentication token to use the Twitter API. Not mine.
      - eli 13y ago
        Click bait in what sense? They are only requesting access to read (not post) tweets. And the reason is because that's how Twitter sort of forces you to do it with their API rate limiting.
- CWIZO 13y ago
  At the very least they should seriously limit to privileges they are requesting. Why do you need to be able to post as me, view my password(?!?!?) and update my profile?
  - avree 13y ago
    You are listing the items in the "This application WILL NOT BE ABLE TO" section. Obviously, no application gets to view your Twitter password... The actual app requests read access to your timeline and followers list.
    - CWIZO 13y ago
      Ah my bad. Thanks for correcting me :)
- me_bx 13y ago
  This might simply be an easy way for the company providing the app to get a lot of twitter users access tokens, to be used in their commercial product in order to get around the twitter API rate limits... LeadSift requires a read-only access so it should not affect you too much.
yanivs 13y ago
How much? apparently not too much from the account I've tested
- jmacd 13y ago
  It knew all the basics about me: Male, Married, Car Owner, Pet Owner, etc.
nada_i 13y ago
this is really cool
andrewcooke 13y ago
huh. so https://twitter.com/ColorlessG https://twitter.com/ColorlessG is male, and interested in politics, tech, science, art and sports. maybe you need to detect when there's nothing significant and say so? :o)
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Or at least not assume that every male is interested in sports.
bionsuba 13y ago
Interesting concept, but it thought my male friend was female and married.
erbo 13y ago
I've no quibble with what it found out about https://twitter.com/erbo https://twitter.com/erbo except that it labeled me as a "parent" when I'm not. What's it basing that assessment on? Or would that be telling?
- tdas 13y ago
  Without going too much into the details: we analyze a user's public posts and the network structure to probabilistically infer the data.
  - erbo 13y ago
    I wonder what I tweeted or what it is about my network that would cause you to infer that I'm a parent when I'm not? Of course, as you say, it's probabilistic, meaning it's not "wrong" that it incorrectly identifies me in particular as a parent; it's only "wrong" if a large number of those parent/non-parent inferences are incorrect over all analyzed accounts.
- markdown 13y ago
  It said I was employed and owned a dog and car. I'm a freelancer, and don't own a dog or a car. Further, I don't remember tweeting about any of those things in the past year, if at all.
- a-priori 13y ago
  I just ran it on myself and a friend of mine (who's far more prolific than I am on Twitter). It said we're both parents, but neither of us are. It didn't get that I'm married (I guess I haven't ever mentioned my wife).
thoughtpalette 13y ago
Got three things wrong on mine =\
- deadfall 13y ago
  I tested it with my girlfriends twitter count and it said she was Male. Maybe I am missing something @_@
mgraczyk 13y ago
From the comments this sounds like an interesting tool, but I don't have a twitter so I guess I can't try it out?
AznHisoka 13y ago
Sports? Literature? Such generic interests. Would be nice to know if someone was interested in say internet marketing, or big data. Something a bit more specific.
- jmacd 13y ago
  My guess is that those things take time to learn/hone? I was impressed what it could do as a first attempt...
rpicard 13y ago
This is an interesting idea and congrats on shipping. It got some things wrong about me though: http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=__rlp http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=__rlp Not interested in sports and I'm not employed as a writer. With a little more accuracy it would be pretty cool.
- zwass 13y ago
  Yes, and I'm not a pet owner. And my college friend is not employed.
JacksonGariety 13y ago
Wow that loading bar at the top of the page is horrendous.
ozh 13y ago
This application does not guess much about me, but thinks I'm a teenager. That, I can't help to be proud of :)
wmil 13y ago
It knows that I'm male and employed. Not particularly impressive.
danudey 13y ago
Things it got right: Some interests (technology, science, politics (yes), business (kind of)), my gender (male), my relationship status (married), and my pet status (enabled). Plus, a gimmie: my location (Vancouver). Things it got wrong: my parent status (I don't have kids, though we're trying), my employment (it thinks I'm a professor, due to my bio), and one interest (ugh sports). Not bad, all in all, but pretty simplistic. I was hoping for some deeper insights.
- warfangle 13y ago
  It got my parent status wrong, too - and I'm single! The rest of it was pretty on the mark, though.
- Anechoic 13y ago
  Things it got wrong: my parent status It got my parental status wrong as well (at least I'm not aware of any kids!). However several of my twitter friends are parents and we've discussed their kids on severe occasions, I wonder if the algorithm is misinterpreting those connections and conversations.
jdalgetty 13y ago
got my gender wrong
650REDHAIR 13y ago
It's pretty close. With over 8k tweets (and a load of pictures) I was expecting a little more. TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS SPORTS SCIENCE POLITICS Would be neat to click on those broad categories and get the tweets that fall into those categories. Also, the social fingerprint page is super sluggish when scrolling- anyone else experiencing this?
- togasystems 13y ago
  Do you know of any other services which offer greater insight into topics that are of interest to you?
antjanus 13y ago
Things it got wrong: sports interest and employment Otherwise, good job! :)
itafroma 13y ago
Maybe it's obvious to others, but just a heads up that it is caching/saving information it collects from your API access and then making its assessment public. I ran it on my own Twitter handle and can access the results page[1] even in private browsing mode and with its API access revoked. Fairly annoying considering its "insights" are mostly wrong. [1]: http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=itafroma http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=itafroma
- pykler 13y ago
  You can use this tool to search for anyone's insights not just your own ... the tool deals only with public data that is available on twitter. Also the cache part, is only temporary for saving on computation and power (being more green). But again, its public data so anyone can do a search on your account or anyone else's, that is not set to private.
rpledge 13y ago
Got my gender wrong - which seems strange as my interests were all typically male (science/tech/sports)... Not being sexist here, it would be interesting if it would list tweets for each category with a weight but maybe that would give away their algorithm
lunixbochs 13y ago
Horse ebooks: Female. Car owner. Pet owner. Married. Popular tweet: "Avoid situations" (5616 retweets) Interested in: Business, Science, Technology, Sports, Travel

33 points by jmacd 13y ago

The LeadSift Fingerprint uncovers details about Twitter users such as the following: · Do you have a pet? · Are you male or female? · Are you interested in sports, fashion technology, business, etc? · Is this a corporate or a personal account? · Are you married? · Are you a parent? · Do you own a car? · Do you own a home? · Are you employed? · What is your profession? more info here ... http://www.prlog.org/12237661-leadsift-announces-social-media-fingerprint-to-provide-consumers-insight-into-social-media-identity.html http://www.prlog.org/12237661-leadsift-announces-social-medi... Disclaimer: I work @leadsift

Kronopath 13y ago

Why does this need access to my Twitter account to run? Can't it just get the publicly-facing information from the Twitter API?

pykler 13y ago
it uses your oauth to do the twitter search. It only looks at public facing info, but due to the amount of traffic we are getting each user needs to use their twitter account to get tweets. Once you grab the info though we cache it so you can share it freely without having to login. Check out mine for example http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=pykler http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=pykler
dustyreagan 13y ago
All Twitter API methods require authentication now-a-days. https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api
- poopicus 13y ago
  Why don't they authenticate with their own Twitter account? I'm not sure why they would need mine.
  - sreejata 13y ago
    The Twitter API calls are rate limited and it would be impossible to handle any meaningful traffic.
  - subv3rsion 13y ago
    Feels like click bait to me. They could use their own authentication token to use the Twitter API. Not mine.
    - eli 13y ago
      Click bait in what sense? They are only requesting access to read (not post) tweets. And the reason is because that's how Twitter sort of forces you to do it with their API rate limiting.
CWIZO 13y ago
At the very least they should seriously limit to privileges they are requesting. Why do you need to be able to post as me, view my password(?!?!?) and update my profile?
- avree 13y ago
  You are listing the items in the "This application WILL NOT BE ABLE TO" section. Obviously, no application gets to view your Twitter password... The actual app requests read access to your timeline and followers list.
  - CWIZO 13y ago
    Ah my bad. Thanks for correcting me :)
me_bx 13y ago
This might simply be an easy way for the company providing the app to get a lot of twitter users access tokens, to be used in their commercial product in order to get around the twitter API rate limits... LeadSift requires a read-only access so it should not affect you too much.

yanivs 13y ago

How much? apparently not too much from the account I've tested

jmacd 13y ago
It knew all the basics about me: Male, Married, Car Owner, Pet Owner, etc.

nada_i 13y ago

this is really cool

andrewcooke 13y ago

huh. so https://twitter.com/ColorlessG https://twitter.com/ColorlessG is male, and interested in politics, tech, science, art and sports. maybe you need to detect when there's nothing significant and say so? :o)

MartinCron 13y ago
Or at least not assume that every male is interested in sports.

bionsuba 13y ago

Interesting concept, but it thought my male friend was female and married.

erbo 13y ago

I've no quibble with what it found out about https://twitter.com/erbo https://twitter.com/erbo except that it labeled me as a "parent" when I'm not. What's it basing that assessment on? Or would that be telling?

tdas 13y ago
Without going too much into the details: we analyze a user's public posts and the network structure to probabilistically infer the data.
- erbo 13y ago
  I wonder what I tweeted or what it is about my network that would cause you to infer that I'm a parent when I'm not? Of course, as you say, it's probabilistic, meaning it's not "wrong" that it incorrectly identifies me in particular as a parent; it's only "wrong" if a large number of those parent/non-parent inferences are incorrect over all analyzed accounts.
markdown 13y ago
It said I was employed and owned a dog and car. I'm a freelancer, and don't own a dog or a car. Further, I don't remember tweeting about any of those things in the past year, if at all.
a-priori 13y ago
I just ran it on myself and a friend of mine (who's far more prolific than I am on Twitter). It said we're both parents, but neither of us are. It didn't get that I'm married (I guess I haven't ever mentioned my wife).

thoughtpalette 13y ago

Got three things wrong on mine =\

deadfall 13y ago
I tested it with my girlfriends twitter count and it said she was Male. Maybe I am missing something @_@

mgraczyk 13y ago

From the comments this sounds like an interesting tool, but I don't have a twitter so I guess I can't try it out?

AznHisoka 13y ago

Sports? Literature? Such generic interests. Would be nice to know if someone was interested in say internet marketing, or big data. Something a bit more specific.

jmacd 13y ago
My guess is that those things take time to learn/hone? I was impressed what it could do as a first attempt...

rpicard 13y ago

This is an interesting idea and congrats on shipping. It got some things wrong about me though: http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=__rlp http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=__rlp Not interested in sports and I'm not employed as a writer. With a little more accuracy it would be pretty cool.

zwass 13y ago
Yes, and I'm not a pet owner. And my college friend is not employed.

JacksonGariety 13y ago

Wow that loading bar at the top of the page is horrendous.

ozh 13y ago

This application does not guess much about me, but thinks I'm a teenager. That, I can't help to be proud of :)

wmil 13y ago

It knows that I'm male and employed. Not particularly impressive.

danudey 13y ago

Things it got right: Some interests (technology, science, politics (yes), business (kind of)), my gender (male), my relationship status (married), and my pet status (enabled). Plus, a gimmie: my location (Vancouver). Things it got wrong: my parent status (I don't have kids, though we're trying), my employment (it thinks I'm a professor, due to my bio), and one interest (ugh sports). Not bad, all in all, but pretty simplistic. I was hoping for some deeper insights.

warfangle 13y ago
It got my parent status wrong, too - and I'm single! The rest of it was pretty on the mark, though.
Anechoic 13y ago
Things it got wrong: my parent status It got my parental status wrong as well (at least I'm not aware of any kids!). However several of my twitter friends are parents and we've discussed their kids on severe occasions, I wonder if the algorithm is misinterpreting those connections and conversations.

jdalgetty 13y ago

got my gender wrong

650REDHAIR 13y ago

It's pretty close. With over 8k tweets (and a load of pictures) I was expecting a little more. TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS SPORTS SCIENCE POLITICS Would be neat to click on those broad categories and get the tweets that fall into those categories. Also, the social fingerprint page is super sluggish when scrolling- anyone else experiencing this?

togasystems 13y ago
Do you know of any other services which offer greater insight into topics that are of interest to you?

antjanus 13y ago

Things it got wrong: sports interest and employment Otherwise, good job! :)

itafroma 13y ago

Maybe it's obvious to others, but just a heads up that it is caching/saving information it collects from your API access and then making its assessment public. I ran it on my own Twitter handle and can access the results page[1] even in private browsing mode and with its API access revoked. Fairly annoying considering its "insights" are mostly wrong. [1]: http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=itafroma http://fingerprint.leadsift.com/?username=itafroma

pykler 13y ago
You can use this tool to search for anyone's insights not just your own ... the tool deals only with public data that is available on twitter. Also the cache part, is only temporary for saving on computation and power (being more green). But again, its public data so anyone can do a search on your account or anyone else's, that is not set to private.

rpledge 13y ago

Got my gender wrong - which seems strange as my interests were all typically male (science/tech/sports)... Not being sexist here, it would be interesting if it would list tweets for each category with a weight but maybe that would give away their algorithm

lunixbochs 13y ago

Horse ebooks: Female. Car owner. Pet owner. Married. Popular tweet: "Avoid situations" (5616 retweets) Interested in: Business, Science, Technology, Sports, Travel