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This is cool. I've been trying to figure out Twitter for the last couple of years. Left to the defaults, using twitter.com as the "interface" it seems to be a

by brk 17y ago

This is cool. I've been trying to figure out Twitter for the last couple of years. Left to the defaults, using twitter.com as the "interface" it seems to be a giant attention-whoring spew of marketeers and SEO "experts". To me (and I think I said this a long time ago in a post here) the potential as a global distributed message bus always seemed so much more powerful. It's kind of like IRC to the next level. I'm going to have to think on this. I've been toying around with some Twitter-based thoughts relating to my home automation and video analytics hobby-projects.

steveklabnik 17y ago
The key to Twitter is to think of it as a big old stream of data. Of course you don't want to read it all. That's why you follow people. It pulls their information out of the stream, and makes a substream for you. The same goes with turning on people to mobile: it pulls them out of that stream, and into one even closer to you.
- brk 17y ago
  I hear you, but I'm not so sure that it's just about picking people to follow. That feels too yesterday... I'd like to pull trends out of the conversations at large. Can Twitter be a trending engine? Can you leverage a topic for financial gain? Is there actionable data in the random blatherings of a million people? If I am JetBlue (I'm not) and people are ranting or raving about some experience on Delta, can I use that data? Run a promo? Give them a safe haven? In one respect, Twitter seems like it can be the exposing of the raw conscious of "the public", that group that has been so elusive to marketeers. The trick is to extract the data, to measure the thing, without affecting that which you are measuring. One of the longest standing challenges in science. I'm rambling, but thinking on iterations of this in my head.
  - diego 17y ago
    If you have any suggestions to improve our tool, we'd be happy to hear them. http://trendistic.com/ http://trendistic.com/
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    Twitter most certainly can be a trending engine. Twitter.com actually has trends on the right hand side, but there are tons of sites that do other things with trends, too. As for JetBlue/Delta, I've bitched about Verizon on Twitter, and within about an hour, had a follow and an @reply from my local division's Twitter account. They then followed up with phone calls, and took care of my problem. And now I tell you that story, which also furthers their image...

by brk 17y ago

steveklabnik 17y ago

The key to Twitter is to think of it as a big old stream of data. Of course you don't want to read it all. That's why you follow people. It pulls their information out of the stream, and makes a substream for you. The same goes with turning on people to mobile: it pulls them out of that stream, and into one even closer to you.

brk 17y ago
I hear you, but I'm not so sure that it's just about picking people to follow. That feels too yesterday... I'd like to pull trends out of the conversations at large. Can Twitter be a trending engine? Can you leverage a topic for financial gain? Is there actionable data in the random blatherings of a million people? If I am JetBlue (I'm not) and people are ranting or raving about some experience on Delta, can I use that data? Run a promo? Give them a safe haven? In one respect, Twitter seems like it can be the exposing of the raw conscious of "the public", that group that has been so elusive to marketeers. The trick is to extract the data, to measure the thing, without affecting that which you are measuring. One of the longest standing challenges in science. I'm rambling, but thinking on iterations of this in my head.
- diego 17y ago
  If you have any suggestions to improve our tool, we'd be happy to hear them. http://trendistic.com/ http://trendistic.com/
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Twitter most certainly can be a trending engine. Twitter.com actually has trends on the right hand side, but there are tons of sites that do other things with trends, too. As for JetBlue/Delta, I've bitched about Verizon on Twitter, and within about an hour, had a follow and an @reply from my local division's Twitter account. They then followed up with phone calls, and took care of my problem. And now I tell you that story, which also furthers their image...