Today I developed and released a new twitter app @medway_tweet.
If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, move along now. Otherwise, stay tuned for a quick description of the new app I have developed.
Now to begin with, I do not claim that this is a unique idea. I have been following @ubuntutweets for ages. But this application is slightly different. @medway_tweet aims to connect local people in the Medway area using an online community brought together by a dispersed and cached network. Twitter.
There is no website, everything is sent to @medway_tweet that checks the twitter search api for the phrase “medway” and simply retweets it. OK, there is more to it than that in the code, but that is the simplicity of the app. By retweeting whenever medway is mentioned in a tweet, the re-tweet encourages the follow, which encourages more tweeting which builds the community.
So if you are in the Medway area, follow @medway_tweet on twitter. Otherwise, stay tuned for for more locations.
[Update 21 March 2009] I have added support for news and sport mentioning the word Medway courtesy of the backstage.bbc.co.uk API. Pleased to be making used of this excellent API and hope this feed adds context to the local focus.
8 Comments
Hey Chris. This sounds like a really good idea. I have not really been ‘moved’ by the Twitter’ thingy until your idea of joining up individual ‘twits’! by a geological region. I will have a look at how it progresses. Cheers for now.
Hi Brian, thanks for dropping by here! Hope all is good with you and Jane. You need to invest time in twitter. Register and follow me -> @yellowpark
I think this is a total waste of time and annoying to see your duplicate tweets amongst the original ones for the search of Medway. You are even including tweets from a town called Medway in the States!!!! There is no value in this project of yours, not useful ….just annoying
Peter, you know you can filter out @medway_tweet from the search results, right?
Peter, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about these ‘bots’ and whether they add value or just piss people off. At the moment I think they add value. I know they piss a couple of people off, you being one of those people, but there are many more people that see value in them.
I have never pimped these twitter accounts. They are self perpetuating. @hackney_tweet has 148 followers and @medway_tweet has 92 followers. While I really do appreciate your concerns here, nI thin the community has decided that they want to see this content.
If you bare using tweet deck, just filter out the twitter account, or block it. Problem solved.
Sorry it pisses you off, but I like seeing conversation on these areas as they are important to me and are building a great community.
Neil – thanks for the support. You talk sense, sir.
I think medway_tweet has value and I follow it. I have found some interesting information and people in Medway from it.
Only complaint is, please stop the Medway, MA, USA retweets, and make sure your retweets are UK only.
Other than that keep it up!
I think these are really valuable in connecting people online who live in the same area, but may have no other common factors that help them “meet” each other online. I’ve certainly found it really useful (I follow the medway one from chris, plus a whitstable one that someone else has set up).
Screening out the US ones would be good – but remember this is something Chris has set up in his spare time, so let’s be grateful he did that.
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[...] writing the @medway_tweet application, I have been thinking about the idea of opening up to include more Medway town names in [...]
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