If you read this blog, you’ll know I use Twitter, as do many of the people I interact with virtually.
Recently, Twitter and its use created a strange alliance that is a powerful case study for new web collaboration.
This alliance made up of a person from SAP, a person from Oracle, an Oracle customer, and a grouchy blogger has come together around a singular cause, i.e. creating a way to tweet to a group and consume group tweets in a single stream.
Eddie Awad (eddieawad), who is an Oracle customer and a valuable Oracle community member, but alas, not an Oracle employee, has created a Twitter account, oow, for OpenWorld tweets. You can tweet into the oow stream by following oow and tweeting @oow.
Eddie wrote a script in his free time, which I’m sure he’ll be happy to share on his blog, that uses the Twitter API to accomplish this. Very cool stuff and useful too.
For example, I might tweet something like “@oow leaving on the first flight to sfo for openworld” on Sunday when I head out for San Francisco. This tweet would appear in the stream for oow as “jkuramot: leaving on the first flight to sfo for openworld”. The power here is that anyone following oow will see all the tweets from everyone in a single stream, which of course can be consumed in RSS. The result is a live stream of information from OpenWorld.
Simultaneously, Craig Cmehil (ccmehil), who does cool new web stuff over at SAP, was working on a similar hack to fill the groups void.
Several Enterprise Irregulars were attending the Defrag conference this week, and many were Twittering the event. They expressed general displeasure with Twitter’s lack of a group functionality, which would make it much easier to tweet to a targeted audience. Enter Craig, who like Eddie, hacks in his free time.
Craig put together eventtrack, whose purpose is “to build ‘on the fly’ groups for Twitters at events”. I’m not sure of the exact implementation details, but eventtrack leverages Twitter’s tracking feature to allow people to tweet to and track a keyword (i.e. the event name) and consolidate the tweets into a single stream. I’ll let Craig correct me in comments.
So, we have the Oracle customer (Eddie), the SAP guy (Craig), you’ve probably figured out the Oracle person is me, so who’s the grouchy blogger?
Surprise, it’s Dennis Howlett (dahowlett). Dennis is the glue that brought this alliance together; through Twitter, I had seen that he was working with Craig on eventtrack. Dennis, in his own way, brought us all together with this tweet:
a lot of the conversation is direct. Of course ORCL tech bods could try and best @ccmehil. 😉
Funny thing is: 1) Eddie doesn’t work for Oracle and 2) it’s not a contest, which I guess is why he emoticon’ed a wink.
This sparked a Facebook conversation (because sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough) in which we all shared requirements and implementations. Right now, it seems ironic that the first conference to test eventtrack is OpenWorld, but such is the new web. We are all working together to scratch that itch, and traditional boundaries no longer mean anything.
So what if Craig and I work for companies that compete with each other? So what if we are in different time zones and have never met in person?
That’s what makes this great. We’re still working out the details. This will be fun.
Congratulations to everyone on this. Great example of ’emergent behavior’ and collaboration.
Congratulations to everyone on this. Great example of ’emergent behavior’ and collaboration.
Couple of comments.
1. Eddie your script is awesome.
2. Twitter needs to deliver the long promised group functionality. 70% of the tweeds that I get this days are crap :(.
Couple of comments.
1. Eddie your script is awesome.
2. Twitter needs to deliver the long promised group functionality. 70% of the tweeds that I get this days are crap :(.
Actually not using the “tracking” feature of Twitter, although that might be cool will have to go take a look.
Basically the idea is not far off from what Eddie did, but in this case no duplicate feeds but the downside is that it’s not targeted like Eddie’s. In my case I look for a “start” on the keyword e.g. “start*oow” then all tweets from that user from then on will be tagged and collected so if you search for “oow” you’d get everyone being tracked. So no need to use “oow” in the tweet the whole time but again not as directed as you get all the “noise” during the whole time until the user does a “stop*oow”
Kind of weird how two threads start in different direction then come full circle and start to merge.
Update: eventtrack seems to be putting along quite nicely only a few kinks so far that have been worked out.
Actually not using the “tracking” feature of Twitter, although that might be cool will have to go take a look.
Basically the idea is not far off from what Eddie did, but in this case no duplicate feeds but the downside is that it’s not targeted like Eddie’s. In my case I look for a “start” on the keyword e.g. “start*oow” then all tweets from that user from then on will be tagged and collected so if you search for “oow” you’d get everyone being tracked. So no need to use “oow” in the tweet the whole time but again not as directed as you get all the “noise” during the whole time until the user does a “stop*oow”
Kind of weird how two threads start in different direction then come full circle and start to merge.
Update: eventtrack seems to be putting along quite nicely only a few kinks so far that have been worked out.
Jake,
There are a couple of products and efforts in place that are beginning to address group twittering.
Check out http://jaiku.com/ . Jaiku was purchased by Google a few weeks back and seem to be the furthest along at this point with a product.
Also check out Factory Joe’s detailed overview of his iniatives related to group twittering http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/
Taylor
Jake,
There are a couple of products and efforts in place that are beginning to address group twittering.
Check out http://jaiku.com/ . Jaiku was purchased by Google a few weeks back and seem to be the furthest along at this point with a product.
Also check out Factory Joe’s detailed overview of his iniatives related to group twittering http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/
Taylor
Thanks guys. It was the first time I used Twitter API to do something (hopefully) useful. I had fun doing it, which proves that I’m a geek.
I also enjoyed the conversation/collaboration among Jake, Craig and Dennis on Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully this is just the start and an indication of more useful things to come.
Thanks guys. It was the first time I used Twitter API to do something (hopefully) useful. I had fun doing it, which proves that I’m a geek.
I also enjoyed the conversation/collaboration among Jake, Craig and Dennis on Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully this is just the start and an indication of more useful things to come.
Taylor: I blogged about Jaiku briefly after its acquisition. Twitter has first-mover status, so Jaiku is a second for me now. Plus, I don’t see enough of a value-add to jump to it.
The link you sent looks promising. I’ll tag it for reading later.
Taylor: I blogged about Jaiku briefly after its acquisition. Twitter has first-mover status, so Jaiku is a second for me now. Plus, I don’t see enough of a value-add to jump to it.
The link you sent looks promising. I’ll tag it for reading later.