Bwana.org » track

Twitter User Streams: Real-Time Is Back?

Bwana — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:24:20 +0000

At Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, they announced a new (or old) feature that has caught my interest: User streams. This new API will allow developers to stream twitter activity to end-users in real-time. This was demonstrated at the conference using the web version of Twitter and TweetDeck. As activity occured in the web browser, TweetDeck updated automatically without polling or refreshing.

Seems cool right?

I thought so too since Twitter neutered real-time tracking a while ago and I thought it was back. Then they did a quick segment on the “firehose” and kind of glossed over it. This segment mentioned partners like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, but said nothing about how it could possibly tie to this User Stream API.

I got to wondering: Is the User Stream API using the firehose or some sub-set of it? Hmmmm.

At any rate, the technology does look good from the demo, but as with anything Twitter, I will wait and see the final implementation before making a judgement call. You can continue to watch Chirp live on http://justin.tv/twitterchirp.

Update: Added a video of the demonstration at Chirp for you all to enjoy!

FriendFeed Filters Are The Star Of The Beta

Bwana — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:41:25 +0000

Yesterday, the team over at FriendFeed made a radical move to their popular website, friendfeed.com. They turned the website into a giant river of ever-flowing information. For those of us who are familiar with the term, “real-time web”, we saw this as a positive step towards it becoming a reality. I’ve already blogged about ways to truly harness the power of real-time FriendFeed, and this new beta emboldens my tips. While there is much controversy on the implementation of the feature, I found myself enthralled by something else they added: filters.

As many have realized, FriendFeed provides a rich source of information for all kinds of interests. Since it aggregates data from social services which originate from all over the web, there is little that you can’t find on FriendFeed. Now with filters, FriendFeed has empowered us to save powerful queries for later usage. While these filters are not real-time like other parts of the site, they will be eventually (and what a day that will be)

Here’s my video walkthrough of the FriendFeed beta:

What is a FriendFeed filter? My loose definition is that it’s a set of defined criteria configured by the user in order to obtain desired data from FriendFeed. The criteria looks like the following:

Name – This is the desired name of the FriendFeed Filter
Include entries from – This is the source of the data you wish filter. The choices are all friendFeed users, your friend and group subscriptions, a specific pre-defined friendfeed list of friends/groups, and names of friendfeed users and groups.
Keyword/quality filters – This is the filter criteria of the source data. There are several fields to utilize, but it should be noted that the “contain the words” field can utilize any FriendFeed search query string. I’ll explain later.

I found myself playing with these filters for most of the day yesterday and had a blast. I want to share with you some of the more powerful ones, but before I do, I will tell you the best way to create new filters. The basic steps are fairly straight forward:

Perform a search on the beta FriendFeed site – First, go here: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search/advanced and fill in the desired criteria. Perform the search and massage the search as needed. Some searches can be improved by updating the number of required comments and likes, so play with that a little bit.
Save the search as a filter – After a search is performed, you’ll notice a link that reads “make a filter”

Click the “make a filter” link
Update the filter name and adjust as needed – Change the filter name to something more descriptive than the default text. Click Save filter to commit the filter

This is a basic, yet powerful approach to creating filters. Once you become more advanced, you’ll recognize the search syntax and perform boolean operands. Here are some of my favorite FriendFeed searches that you can save as filters by using the technique above. I’ll start with the search string, explain what it means, and provide a hyperlink (note: most of these search ALL of FriendFeed:

Name: The FriendFeed Team

Search String: comments:5 likes:5 from:tudor, bgolub, ana, gburd, kfury, jim, casey, sanjeev, paul, bret, dhsiao

Meaning: Searches for all entries by the FriendFeed development team with at least 5 comments and 5 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Comments

Search String: service:(intensedebate) OR service:(backtype) OR service:(disqus) comments:1 likes:5

Meaning: Searches all blog commenting services for entries with at least 1 comment and 5 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot FriendFeed Posts

Search String: service:(friendfeed) comments:50 likes:30

Meaning: Searches all native FriendFeed posts for entries with at least 50 comments and 30 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Web Links

Search String: service:(twine) OR service:(stumbleupon) OR service:(misterwong) OR service:(magnolia) OR service:(furl) OR service:(delicious) OR service:(diigo) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches social bookmarking services for entries with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Photos

Search String: service:(smugmug) OR service:(flickr) OR service:(fotolog) OR service:(photobucket) OR service:(zooomr) OR service:(picasa) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches photo services for entries with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Thomas Hawk’s Liked Photos

Search String: service:(flickr) OR service:(smugmug) OR service:(fotolog) OR service:(photobucket) OR service:(picasa) OR service:(zooomr) like:thomashawk

Meaning: Searches for photo entries liked by Thomas Hawk

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Videos

Search String: service:(youtube) OR service:(vimeo) OR service:(12seconds) OR service:(dailymotion) OR service:(joost) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches for popular videos with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search

You get the idea? You can get very creative with these filters. I highly recommend you also review the advanced search operators as it will allow you to venture further:

If you have any questions relative to the FriendFeed beta, I recommend checking out their beta FAQ. Of course, you’ll find me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/bwana.

Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)

Bwana — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:16:13 +0000

Last month, I blogged my return to Twitter due to the fact that the Track feature was dead. I saw the responses Twitter gave Steve Gillmor at Bearhug camp and determined they were prolonging the obvious: Track is dead, and they’re not bringing it back.

Yesterday, I learned that Twitter has officially gone on record to say that their Instant Messaging (IM) feature is not coming back. (in so many words):

To summarize, we want to bring IM back. We intend to bring IM back. But we’ve officially moved it from our Things That are Broken list to our Things We Want to Build list. Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things—so it will be a while before we tackle it. Like any budget (in this case, the budget of our limited engineering time), tough calls need to be made—especially in these times. And while we don’t expect everyone to agree with this decision, we at least want to be straightforward with you.

Translation: Don’t count on IM coming back, ever. Steve Gillmor doesn’t sound surprised by the announcement since I believe he shares the same pessimism with me regarding IM/Track at Twitter. ReadWriteWeb thinks IM will possibly be back next spring. I believe that’s a very optimistic view.

If you must have IM/Track functionality, there are a couple of options available:

Follow TweetTrak and send direct messages on terms you want to track. It will send you responses via direct message.
TwitterSpy is a popular option (I use IdentiSpy for tracking on identi.ca). It is an XMPP jabber bot with lots of features.

Twitter’s stance on IM re-emphasizes my goal of rediscovering how to best utilize Twitter. Since my return, I’ve been using TweetDeck and TwitterSpy with some success. This is my current method of utilizing Twitter:

TweetDeck to do non-realtime tracking of terms using their search feature. I also use TweetDeck to track replies, and keywords related to my websites and me.
TwitterSpy for some interests such as mobile phone news, Apple, web 2.0 topics
Twinkle on my iPhone for mobile Twittering
Twitter through Ping.FM for general blast messages

I’m still clinging to Track by using TwitterSpy, but I find it to be more reliable than TweetDeck’s search implementation. Once TweetDeck becomes more reliable, I can get away from using IM completely.

So this is the new Twitter folks. I say we start getting used to it, adapt, and adjust.

The Reason Why I Returned to Twitter: Track is Dead

Bwana — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:54:15 +0000

I’ve been away from Twitter for about 4 months as I’ve stated in previous posts. Many of you know my frustrations regarding Twitter’s smoke & mirrors routine when it comes to uptime and availability. Most of this angst was driven by my lust for Twitter’s absent Track feature. Last week at bearhug camp, the guys at Twitter were interviewed by Steve Gillmor and Dave Winer regarding various hot topics such as Track. Leo Laporte was kind enough to stream the entire event live. While I didn’t learn anything new from their (Twitter’s) responses, I did finally come to one important realization:

Track is not coming back.

At least, not in the form that I previously loved. I loved that I had access to a ginormous global chat room and I had the ability to filter it for terms that I cared about. The potency of information I received was unparalleled. It was fast, real-time, and personal. Those days are gone and I’ve accepted it. The stable Twitter that everyone loves today is not the same one of the past. Many people are content with it and are happy with a web based term searching feature called Twitter Search. For me, it’s not the same, but I have to let it go and move on.

Track/XMPP has proven to be a technological hurdle as our friends at identi.ca are learning. It’s a beast. They haven’t been able to keep their implementation going consistently with just a small fraction of what Twitter has to deal with. My issue up until this moment was that I didn’t want to believe that Twitter’s “firehose” of information for everyone was too much for any current implementation to handle. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.™

In short, I’ve tasted Track and it was so delicious, the flavor still lingers on my tongue, but I’ve got to let it go.

So, by letting go of the possibility that Track is ever going to exist again, I am able to use Twitter again. Twitter, in its current crippled state, has proven to be fairly stable. By disabling my beloved Track, and other back end tweaks that they have no disclosed, they seem to be able to handle the load.

I also went on record that I didn’t want to use Twitter as a spamming/marketing platform as most people seem to want to do. Over the next few days/weeks, I’m going to try to reinvent Twitter’s usefulness to me. Since I once was more a consumer of information more than a provider, I now have to find a balance using the tools that are available to me. Of course, I could try to cling to my roots and use TwitterSpy, but then I would be lying to myself.

So as of today, I’m officially back on Twitter. The means by which I will use it is yet to be determined, but if you want to follow me on there, I’m at http://www.twitter.com/bwana.

After 4 Months, Has Twitter Improved?

Bwana — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:56:55 +0000

It’s still not common knowledge among my online friends that I left Twitter on June 06, 2008. It’s been about 4 months since I did, and it seems like a lot has changed. Twitter is receiving praise for their improved “uptime” over the past months. Some have gone on record to state this could be the end of the “fail whale”. I have a problem with this conclusion. When a service is not working, it’s not up.

Period.

Twitter has had issues with their XMPP Instant Messaging (IM) feature and their Track feature. I went on record to state that these features were my primary way to use Twitter. Guess what? Twitter IM and Track are still not working, and it seems like nobody cares. These were two features which made Twitter great in my mind. People seem content with “hacks” such as Summize search (now acquired and called Twitter search) and Twitterspy, which relies on the former. This is not track. This is a hack. I’m not knocking the authors of Twitterspy because I think it’s a great way to get around the lack of track on Twitter. It’s still a hack though.

Know what’s even worse? Twitter is not even acknowledging the return of IM or Track in their latest status blog entries. The last mention of the IM feature was July 7th, 2008, and the last mention of Track was June 13th, 2008:

Track: this service is disabled and will remain offline until it can be reworked

I hope I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t think I am. People like Steve Gillmor believe IM/Track conflicts with the business goals of Twitter and he believes this is why it’s possibly gone forever.

I don’t know the details behind this, but at this point, I don’t care. Either remove the services from your offering or acknowledge your service is not up until IM and Track are working.

When Twitter brings these services back, then I can acknowledge such statements “99.3% uptime”. Until then, I get a bad taste in my mouth when a company says their service is “up” and several features are disabled. Disagree with me? Well, ask Twitter who did they negotiate their Service Level Agreement (SLA) with? How can you boast about uptime with no SLA?

On the flip side, I’m glad to see Twitter getting mainstream coverage, like with CNN. I’m just saddened I can’t use it for anything other than a spamming platform, which I refuse to do. So after 4 months, has Twitter improved? No. Why? Because it’s still down.