Displaying topic specific tweets in Twitter

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+1 Q:

Displaying topic specific tweets in Twitter

I'd like to integrate Twitter into my app but keep the tweets specific to the app topic. For example, if the app is about recipes, all tweets on the built in Twitter client will be about recipes. Basically acting like a chat client about recipes.

However, I don't think Twitter works that way. You basically follow someone (say the app's Twitter name) and see tweets from the app's Twitter name. In this case, customers will follow the recipe app and can see its tweets. But I'd also like tweets from any followers to display in the Twitter client but only if they are relevant to the recipe app. In other words, I don't want anything a follower might tweet to appear. Meaning, they need to tweet under the recipe app for the tweet to appear. Maybe I'm confused about how Twitter works and this sort of focused tweeting won't be an issue. Can any one explain if this is possible?

+2 A:

Put a Hash Tag in the users tweets, such as #recipeappname. Then display tweets that only contain that Hash Tag.

bpapa 2009-12-07 05:55:07

By users' tweets, you mean customers of the recipe app for example? And you are saying to capture the tweet, insert the hash tag and then send it to Twitter? The API allows that?

4thSpace 2009-12-07 06:40:24

I don't really understand your domain so I'm not sure how tweets respond to customers. If your users are sending tweets using your app, you can certainly pre-populate the content with a hash tag of your choosing. Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly but it looks like users will be able to send tweets directly from your app.

bpapa 2009-12-07 13:03:43

Thanks. I guess what I'm asking is where do the tweets from my app go? The hashtag will organize them but do I need to setup a @myrecipeapp so people have somewhere to tweet/follow?

4thSpace 2009-12-07 18:00:18

No. If your app is simply going to allow tweeting with a particular hash tag and viewing tweets with that hash tag, there is no need to set up an account to follow. You can programatically submit tweets using the Twitter API and use the same API to fetch all tweets containing a given hash tag.

bpapa 2009-12-07 18:36:41

Thanks. Technically I see how this is done. But it is ok two put a hashtag with every tweet from the app? This site has some nice guidelines http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags and basically says not to use it with every tweet. But how else can I group?

4thSpace 2009-12-07 20:52:04

I would assume users won't be sending very many tweets from a Recipe app, correct? A few hash tags in their tweetstream isn't going to bother anybody. If you do some more exploring you'll see examples of people using Hash Tags to the extreme - for example at conferences people will create a "back channel" via HashTags, sending hundreds of tweets out in a matter of minutes.

bpapa 2009-12-07 21:15:30

I see. So the hashtagged tweets go to the user's Twitter account and anyone that looks up twitter.com/someuser, will also see the hashtags that user send from my app?

4thSpace 2009-12-08 00:40:15

Yes. Instead of thinking of this as a misuse (which it probably won't be, unless your users are hopelessly addicted to your app), you could think of it as some free viral marketing. ;)

bpapa 2009-12-08 05:33:17

Thanks. I have one other question on this: I've been looking at using the "from [myapp]" feature: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/FAQ (#2. i.). Will the #myapp hashtags display in every tweet? If I use the "from [myapp]" feature instead of hashtags, I could query for "from [myapp]" right? Or would there be any disadvantages?

4thSpace 2009-12-10 21:52:27

"from [myapp]" has nothing to do with HashTags, it's a way to publish what client was used. The only place I ever really see this data put to use is on Twitter's own site.

bpapa 2009-12-10 22:03:28

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Displaying topic specific tweets in Twitter

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