Service Profile: mketweeps
This post is more than 18 months old. Since technology changes too rapidly, this content may be out of date (but
that's not always the case). Please remember to verify any technical or programming information with the current
release.
Goal: I came up with an idea that I wanted to find local people in our area and mention them using a twitter bot. Pretty simple.
Two requirements were they either had to use the word milwaukee in their profile or be from the milwaukee location, and they had to not have a blank profile. The tweet contained a shout out to their name and as much of their profile as could be fit in the tweet.
Technology used:
Zend framework command line cron job. Once an hour it ran. Pretty simple using the Zend Framework OAuth stuff. (Originally I was using the first version of the API to twitter - so I used standard HTTP requests).
Lessons learned:
- Stay current when APIs change. I ignored the oAuth change at twitter and had a bot that was not functioning for a long time.
- Follow the people you mention. Very little people followed the bot even though they were mentioned.
- Lots of replies … ok so that isn’t such a ’lessons learned’ but a “what should I have done about that”
- Monetization. What if I had grown a large collection of followers. Now what?
- Personal account: I should have followed people that replied to the bot. I generally ignored all the tweets even. Pay more attention!
Screenshots
