Tracking Twitter
One of the driving philosophies behind Twitter has always been to get away from the computer, get out there and do something, and tell your friends about it in real-time. That's why Twitter works over IM and text messaging—you can bring your phone almost anywhere to interact and share.You can follow friends on your phone through Twitter, but what about concepts? What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned your name, your favorite band, "NYC," "earthquake," or "Steve Jobs?" In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?
Today we're releasing a tiny feature to do just that, and we're calling it "Track." If you've set up your phone or IM on Twitter, you can send a command like:
track NYC
When someone (anyone who updates in public) mentions "NYC," you'll get it on your device in real-time. From there you can send "whois username" to find out more about that person, or "follow username" to follow his or her updates. Don't want to receive anymore about NYC? Toggle it off with:
untrack NYC
You can create as many of these as you want, so send "track drinking tea", "track iphone", "track walking san francisco" and you'll receive matches for all. Want to get a list of what you're currently tracking? Send "track" alone (or "stats"). Turn them all off by sending "track off".
We love this technology, and hope you do too. We're continuing to refine and play with it, so please send your feedback!
What will you track?
posted by jack at 6:06 PM
99 Comments:
Hey, congrats. Any chance you'll be able to add filters to commands?
This sounds very promising.... wonder how I can take advantage of that in little old NB Canada!
Brilliant! I've been hoping Twitter would introduce some sort of communal forum/chat room feature, and this is better than I ever imagined.
Guess I gotta up that iPhone sms plan to unlimited.
this is awesome. have any idea when we will see it in the api?
> You'll now receive updates matching "@riddle". To stop, send "track @riddle"
You meant:
> To stop, send "untrack @riddle"
?
this looks interesting, any plans to make it available through the api in the future, I was only thinking this afternoon that I would like to integrate the # 'tagging' system that factoryjoe is using into Hahlo, and this 'tracking' system could work for that...I think.
Can you not track things on the web interface? mostly I like to use the web interface during the day at work and when tracking new slightly random things I would prefer to use it on the web.
It's a very promising feature... Currently i'm tracking the name of my blog & the name of my company ;-)
What will I track? My username, "stephtara". Like that I get @replies on my phone, too. And I don't miss people answering or talking to me.
Twitter Information Awareness? Is John Poindexter working for you guys now?
Am I the only one who thinks this is a privacy problem? (Or a "facebook," as it's now known: "to pull a facebook") My posts are "public," but there's a difference between being theoretically available to anyone, and being stalked by someone who ego-tracks his name.
The rule is: Never change anything that affects privacy in such as way that it disseminates information more widely, without the explicit permission from each user regarding his own information.
I want to remain public so that followers of common friends can check me out and make contact. But I want to opt out of this global search thing.
Any chance of a "track cap"? Most folk are limited to X SMS (as David pointed out). I'm worried about malicious track pranks: "track a", or "track do", or some other vague term!
What characters does tracking handle? Does it match just punctuated/delimited words?
Although not for the same reason as jdbartlett, I'd like to see this supplemented with a throttle to prevent information overload, i.e. max x notifications per hour/day. Limiting it to your contacts will be welcome but would not be the same.
As to peter's comments, if your messages are public they're being indexed by search engines. Online privacy is very clear-cut, you either have it (private), or you don't (public). If it is public in any form whatsoever there is no benefit in preventing it from being public through other channels. Except making it marginally more difficult to reach (legitimate or otherwise), e.g. not having an RSS feed because 'it makes it harder to copy' or somesuch.
Peter you may not be the only one but you're probably pretty alone in your beliefs. I mean I don't know how you could have assumed that twitter was in any way even semi-private with the public feed, twittervision, and other API mashups. Not to mention that it's all searchable via google (use site:twitter).
Re: privacy and "...being stalked by someone who ego-tracks his name..."
This is a moot argument -- you can't stalk a specific user, only the keywords for what they say. The only way to follow a user is, well, to follow them, and if you're private you have to accept them. Done.
Besides, if you're public, you're available for search as much as the individual items are exposed to Yahoo!(search for "site:twitter.com your-keyword" and subscribe to the results in RSS, for example). If you're private, your posts should be excluded from tracking, as much as they are excluded from search engines.
Wonderful.
But there's something to add here. The "where" thing. I would love tracking twitter "in my area", or "in other place, city, country"
I found a little bug for Twitter Tracking Feature, confused users.
Please see for more.
KICK ASS! I fraking love twitter and using it via SMS. This is such an awesome feature. Thanks a lot. Keep up the good work.
Great feature. Now the nice people at iconfactory should somehow build this into Twitterrific ;) in a tab maybe? Also... maybe for twitter.com, another tab from the home menu could be "Tracks" or something. So that not just SMS and IM users can use this feature...
P.S. Everywhere I click on this commenting area tries to take me to another page. I keep having to click "Cancel" ... Maybe a link in one of the above comments that wasn't ended?
One issue with the following.
Doing "follow josephgrossberg" works fine, but "off josephgrossberg" won't unsubscribe me from that person's updates; instead that message appears as a normal update.
Is this phone/IM only?
I noticed that the tracking feature doesn't overrule the notification settings for users that you're already following.
I've set phone notifications for everyone I'm following to off (too many text messages), but would love to be able to enable this for certain tweets. Like the one with @mytwitteraccount in it so that I won't miss tweets directed at me.
I know that they could use a direct message for that, but a lot of times the conversation is semi public anyway.
And of course it would be really nice to also be able to store those track responses in the time line and make them available through the API that way.
Think i found a bug in track. if i track key words, it continues to track anything that persons says after they mention the key word, whether they mention the key word or not.
for example, if i track "orange" anyone who says "orange" I get a hit. but after that, no matter what they say, I continue to get hit.
and, could this be sent to my feed instead of IM/SMS. I follow my feed'n'friends more than my sms/IM.
cool feature...has the potential to get meta on meta... :)
First thing I'm going to track is all my friend's usernames.
I hate when there's a conversation going on, and I only see half of it because the other half isn't someone I follow.
Then I'll probably track my company, and my city, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
some kind of implementation via web/twtrrific?
Eduardito se saca una foto desde arriba para el perfil de twitter!! jajajaj
complejo de gordo! parace las gorditas que ponen foto desde arriba en msn!
No offense... but would love to see you guys concentrating on getting Twitter to work properly before you launch more features!!
I would love to use this with the web interface. :-)
Any chance of that happening?
This is great! Since i joined (?) Twitter i came to know about lot of new stuff and met intelligent and hundreds of creative people. I think this feature will speed up the process of exploring. Congrats and thanks!
Very good!
http://twitter.com/camiseteio
Sweet new feature! Good job, Twitter!
This new feather is so cool.
Great idea, congrats! A question and a suggestion. How do you track, are you using tools like google news, mysyndicaat or a combination of them?
Now, what about releasing a wordpress plug-in in order to allow me to be promptly advised about comments on my blog?
that's simply amazing!
too bad we can't receive any sms from twitter here in italy :(
when you think you'll be able to restart the sms service for us?
Great idea, Jack, makes twitter much more "useful" (does that matter?)
If I track "cute, smart guys" you think I'll ever get a date?
Ok, and now the track list for everyone on our home page!
Welcome to Twitter Mr. spam. :-(
It'd be nice if this was case sensitive - or at least an option.
I'd like to track my company, commonly know as "ETC", but not get all the twitters with "etc" in them.
This is a great feature. I can imagine tracking many terms. Is there any way to see a list of what terms I'm tracking? Perhaps under who I'm following, etc?
^Yes. ;)
"Want to get a list of what you're currently tracking? Send 'track' alone (or 'stats'). Turn them all off by sending 'track off'."
Twitter tracking or how to finally be able to monitor the buzz around your brand, your product ! Or simply how to be kept updated on some interesting stuff...
Brilliant feature - well done guys !
http://sandrineplasseraud.typepad.com/marketing/2007/10/twitter-trackin.html
I have always known that twitter will change the face of communication from email to twitter and beyond. Now, tracking is a step forward. Cheerios!
I'd love if tracking could be integrated into the web site.
(1) I would like to be able to see and manage the list of terms I'm tracking via the web interface.
(2) I would like messages delivered due to tracking to also show up on my "recent" tab in the web interface.
If it's true that tracking fails to match sends by people you follow but have notifications turned off for, that is possibly a bit odd. Perhaps a bug.
great! but we also need to send tweets to different groups in twitter...please! ;)
Tracking's a great feature, thanks!
Now this makes a little too many SMS's for my taste - I'll have to stop tracking until you guys make it somehow available on the website (or in any kind of app).
This is great!
Thanks you guys, Twitter is a great creation. Keep on RockZ!
This is great, but I don't use SMS. I do everything through the website or TwitBin. From my phone, I do it through the mobile browser. So when will I be able to get this through the site or in my feed?
Great, I'm going to try to use this feature with some friends at the National Yo-Yo Contest (track NYYC), but I wish I didn't have to use SMS for this feature. Luckily, the NYYC is over a weekend.
Fix the international SMS got double copy issue...if twitter can't fix pro like this..don't run away...how people trust your product? i have complain tis many time to cystal and seem no one cares now...tis is BAD!!
Hi Twitterfolk,
Can you have another go at explaining this? I had it set-up for a little while but it seems I only receive track SMSs from:
a) randoms I don't know (which is ok)
b) people I'm following, but *only* if I've also turned on notifications from them.
... the second being rather useless as if I already have notifications turned on for those people (and have the main notifications switch on "on") then I receive all their updates for SMS anyway ... so tracking is useless in these instances.
The way I *want* to use this is for (a) as is, but also to receive tweets from people I follow that are directed at me (using the @ notation) or mention my name or username without having to subscribe to their whole feed.
Is this doable? What combo of main notif switch, notif channel and user notifs do I have to set to make this happen?
Cheers
Slightly confused by something; sometimes my track updates come with extra content appended to them.
The most recent one I noticed included
"?: What are you doing...under there?"
at the end...
Are these bits of other people's updates?
Yeah good question Ian - I noticed that too, the ?: and Tip:
How about being able to filter the results by language. I want to see everything about Oracle but only in English. I turned this on last night and have been inundated with lots of Spanish posts.
great feature, but i want to be able to preview what the result volume would be online vs. getting inundated with text messages if i discover i picked a keyword that gets 500 hits/day.
i can't get this feature to work. i receive twitters on my cell regularly, so my phone is setup correctly. however, when i text "track ____" or even just "track", nothing happens. tried it a bunch of times over the last few weeks. can you help? my user name is joelaz.
"Marc Andreessen is a genious."
Try this for some twitter fun:
TwitterBot: You'll now receive updates matching 'fuck fucking fkn bastard skank'. To stop, send 'untrack fuck fucking fkn bastard skank'.
Just another vote for tracking via the web interface, please...
I'm not chained to my phone and IMs, and I'd like to come to the website and check the terms I'm tracking, the same way I can check the people I'm following.
Add my vote for wanting to see this in the Web interface.
I also think a track tab on the web interface would be nice, so it would work through twitteriffic or the web interface I use while at work. SMS and IM is not as useful to me.
We so need this as a web page and RSS feed
Great addition!
1. It would be great to add Tracking Exclusions, e.g.:
track Adobe -Soundbooth -- to track everything on Adobe excluding the soundbooth
2. Also, to add mandatory words like
track +Adobe +Photoshop -- to track only items where both Adobe and Photoshop words are presented.
@joe_laz: I can't get it working either and I am getting the IM confirmation that I'm tracking the new keyword and how to untrack.
I tried obvious terms like the so-called "hot" term of "overheard", "jobs", "lunch", etc. Nothing works. Nice idea though.
@anonymous 6:14 am: It's working now. Seems to take some time to take effect. Either that, or none of the thousands of twits were talking about lunch.
How do we know which terms the message is matching? How do we know which terms we have active?
We need to be able to request a list of terms so we can turn them off appropriately. We need tracking management.
when is the api going to be updated with this tracking functionality?
nice, but would be good to have a command to list all the terms you are tracking eg. tracklist ;) otherwise i have to remember what i'm tracking...
is this feature only available in the US? signed up to 3 tags and receive no SMS....
This post has been removed by the author.
Yeah, it would be good if I could read properly..."tracks" or "stats" to answer my own question.
Twitter tracker are treating accented characters as word separators, I believe this is a bug.
For example, I am tracking the term "ning" and the spanish word ningún is showing up in the radar as well :)
Hi Jack this is awesome!! I love it.
Will there eventually be a way to sign up for conversations to track? I love food I would love to track even participate in food twitters...all day long. How can I do that?
It would be great to filter this based on a language.
Is there a way to use twitter tracking without configuring a mobile device?
It is amazing! I like it so much.
Wonderful feature. You have created something real new here.
Now, how about adding timezone (local time) information? like
"(username 01:23) i am going to bed"
would be useful when i track on general words like "chess"
Great feature, but "track" overrides blocks. I'm getting hits on my trackers from Twitter users that I have blocked.
Well, I'd track futuristic, or alien romance, or romance novels, but not on a cellphone. That would cost me!
Great feature, now a key ingredient in my Twitter Soup, with recipes for Twitter to Facebook, Facebook to Twitter. Thanks a million.
Well, I could definitely use this when on tour with the band... where the hell is the guitar player??? we're late!
Nate Ritter and others have been using the hashtag #sandiegofire over the last few days. For some background, see my recent blog post and the links therein for further details.
Phenomenal... have you guys got a buy out offer yet? Or maybe I missed it. If not, it's coming. If so, congrats!
That sounds great - tracking made easy by twitter ;)
It sends dupes if you're subscribing to someone who matches a tracked word.
I added atlanta commute to my tracking list and then sent a web message containing this text - no SMS message on my phone. What gives?
Nice thing, it will be nice http://credit-auto-loan.bravehost.com/map.html
Very good!
This feature is the foundation to the evolution of ... (i hate to say it) ... 'social search'.
this is cool. No doubt. However what I really want to do is set up groups for sending twitters so that certain friends get it and others do not. This is useful if you have friends from many cities but you dont want to bother someone with a useless message that does not apply to their city. So, Id like to have categories like San Francisco, New York, work, girls. etc...
nice feature. looking forward to what's next on the twitter list
Another vote for a language setting for track. Sadly one of my tracks is a popular work in (I think) Dutch.
BOA!
VERY GOOD
http://twitter.com/comunicadores
this does not work for me. i'm tracking pretty common things like "providence" or "red sox" and i get nothing.
90 comments posted ... 91, now.
How many comments read?
Take 2: can anyone here relate to "solipsism"? If a though arises in cyber-space, does it make a splash?
hwhat?! no tracking on the main site? or on the mobile site? i don't want to interface with this feature through a txtmezzagfe.lolwtf
Just wanted to place another vote for the Twitter track language filter.
Brian.
how did we ever live without this?
This is probably a Twitter newbie question- Will it be possible to do Twitter Tracking with my Powerbook? I never use IM and refuse to carry a mobile phone...
One more vote for web interface and RSS.
Cool new feature! It will be interesting to use this in events like the Cali fires or elections
What I want:
I'm trying to drive into town, but there are cars packed tight everywhere. There are families all walking down the sidewalk in the same direction. I get out my cell phone and Twitter something like "what's all the commotion downtown?" and two or three people in my area respond "it's the harvest festival! free admission in the park".
A communal mini-blog/forum/IM with people who are grouped by tags or topics or whatever. Like I could say "track [my zip code]" to see anything being said in the area around me.
This looks cool. I have to try it out.
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