Twitter reply sniffer
I use the Twitter reply sniffer output in Netvibes as a module that sits on top of my Tweet stream. It pulls out directed messages for higher priority consumption.
A while back I asked a question through Twitter. Paul pointed out that what if there were people that were following me, saw my question, and replied; but I wasn’t following them. Then I wouldn’t see the reply. My solution at the time was to add everyone that was following me, which ended up making my incoming Twitter stream noisy. Then, I found a Twitter reply sniffer on Yahoo! Pipes and thought I found my solution. After looking at the source for how the sniffer worked, I realized that the pipe was only searching through the stream of people you were following, so while it was helpful for catching missed direct messages, it still required the replyee to be part of the list of folks I was following, which still left me with a noisy Twitter subscription feed.
Then, I found TerraMinds. They offer the most timely search engine for Twitter on the web. So, I put together a Pipe that notifies you of messages directed at you on Twitter, even if you are not following the sender. You can enter your Twitter username and subscribe to the output in a feed reader or a widget dashboard.
If you’re not familiar with Yahoo! Pipes’ interface, here’s a quick image showing you where to enter your Twitter username and where you can subscribe to the output via SMS, email, and/or RSS. **IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you enter your Twitter username *AND* click the “Run Pipe” button *BEFORE* using the subscription options.
Enjoy!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I see all replies to me from everyone in my Twitter replies feed, even if I’m not following them…
From Matt King on February 12th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Really, are you using a particular client? It’s not the default functionality.
From Justin on February 12th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I know that clients like Twitterrific will show me replies, even if I’m not following the person.
I had noodled around with making something like this in Yahoo Pipes, but now I don’t have to!
Another option is to use a search engine like TerraMinds or TweetScan, which provides you an RSS feed of all mentions of whatever you searched for, anywhere on Twitter.
From Josh Bancroft on February 12th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Justin,
I think it’s a setting in the Twitter app itself. Have a look! Also, I know Twitterific supports this behavior.
From Josh Pyles on February 12th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
It’s a setting - go to http://twitter.com/account/notifications
and set “Show me: ” to “All @ replies”
Not sure though how it gets interpreted in the various clients or if it impacts the feed before the client sees it.
Also not convinced that some @replies don’t get missed or “dropped” by this setting.
From John Eckman on February 12th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Sweet pipe!
I had to hack on it a little - well, because that’s just what I do :-)
I added a date / time stamp to the end of the title so you can also see when the reply was sent.
I also filtered for duplicates. Honestly, I wouldn’t expect them, but Twitter can be flaky sometimes, so I wanted to be sure.
For some reason, Yahoo Pipes strips out the leading 0 in the y:published time fields. 0:2 is displayed instead of 00:02. Anyone know how to easily add the leading 0 back in on single digit numbers? I know that I could use pubDate, but it’s too long and the format isn’t very nice.
Here’s my tweaked version:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/geekygirldawn/ea0f9c9d6e951617143d4def230d4d3b
From Dawn Foster on February 12th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Bancroft, this Pipe is powered by TerraMinds! :) Our rudimentary research indicates TerraMinds has a faster indexing process than TweetScan.
Thanks Josh Pyles and John Eckman for pointing me to that setting! I use the output in a Netvibes as a module that sits on top of my full Tweet stream so they are isolated for my higher priority attention, so I think I’ll still use this over activating them in my Tweet stream. :)
Also, I think I’ll make another version that doesn’t tack on the “@” symbol so a person can use it for rep tracking as well. Like if you wanted to keep an eye for anytime someone says your real name or company name. Stay tuned. ;)
From Justin on February 12th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Right on, Dawn! You always have smart innovations to things like Pipes and Netvibes.
From Justin on February 12th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
[...] put together a really cool Yahoo Pipe, Twitter Reply Sniffer, to track twitter replies today using TerraMinds. You can read all of the details on his [...]
From Yahoo Pipes Track Twitter Replies with RSS at Fast Wonder Blog on February 12th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
[...] Metafluence - Twitter reply sniffer [...]
From Recent Links on Ma.gnolia at Fast Wonder Blog on February 16th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hi Justin,
Love the ‘Twitter Reply Sniffer’!
I started to use it couple of days ago to display the feed on the sidebar of my blog, but since yesterday it doesn’t work anymore.
On my blog it shows this message:
“An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.”
and on the yahoo pipes page this:
“No pipe results for Twitter Reply Sniffer.
This Pipe ran successfully but encountered some problems:
warning error fetching http://terraminds.com/twitter/update-rss?query=%40metafluence (408 User-agent timeout (select))”
Any idea or suggestion?
Andrea
From Andrea on March 14th, 2008 at 1:13 am
[...] while back, I modified Justin’s Twitter Reply Sniffer to add a little more functionality. The reply sniffer is really useful to help find Twitter @ [...]
From Yahoo Pipes: Track Twitter Replies with RSS Part Duex at Fast Wonder Blog on March 14th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[...] also wanted to thank Justin Kistner at Metafluence for creating the first rev of this pipe. He came up with the idea to do this and found the services [...]
From Yahoo Pipes Twitter Reply Sniffer: More Improvements at Fast Wonder Blog on March 17th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I really appreciate knowing that Yahoo Pipes can do this on twitter streams.
and I hope this is the first openid comment you got.
From John Sechrest on March 30th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
[...] want to thank Justin Kistner at Metafluence for creating the first rev of this pipe. He came up with the idea to do this and found the services [...]
From Yahoo Pipe: Major Upgrade to the Twitter Reply Sniffer at Fast Wonder Blog on July 5th, 2008 at 10:51 am
[...] want to thank Justin Kistner at Metafluence for creating the first rev of the Twitter Reply Sniffer. Please let me know if you see any issues [...]
From Twitter Sniffer for Brands at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media on August 18th, 2008 at 9:19 am