Fan Faire Communication (or Twitter anyone?)

[kol]

So, at last years Fan Faire... there was a pretty cool service... You could send a text message to a special number for the games you're interested in and you would be notified when there were things going on related to that game.I'm sure something similar will be there this year, but we all know that a lot of the fun happens outside of the "official" events.Enter Twitter... If you haven't heard of it.. its called microblogging (posts limited to 140 characters) and you can do it from cell phones by text message, a client on your computer, or perhaps even by Instant Message (depending on the stability of the Twitter servers).What's cool about it is.. you can follow your friends and get get notified whenever they post something. You may be entertained to hear about random stuff in your friends day, or perhaps be able to pose questions to your friends at large, or even announce changes in your plans. You can also send private messages directly to people as well. Of course, you can control who you get messages from and what times of the day you don't want to be bothered all that other fun stuff. Only down side to fully using it is that you can burn through a LOT of text messages (mine's unlimited, so i don't really care about the 2500+ messages or so a month I use).The real point of this post is that I'm proposing a hash tag people can use when they are talking about Fan Faire. One of the other features of twitter is that you can 'track' certain words... so whenever people use those words, their message gets sent to you. You can track 'basketweaving' and whenever anyone says that, you'll hear about it, even if they are on the other side of the world! A hash tag is the 'normal' way for conventions or groups to coordinate, especially when it isn't possible for everyone to follow everyone else. I think an appropriate hashtag is '#fanfaire'. I'm already tracking it, and look forward to hear from all of you!So, Short version of this post if you don't want the details and you're new to this:<ul><li>Go to twitter.com</li><li>Sign up</li><li>Follow your friends that may be signed up (I'm "RyanK" there if you have no friends! Also track 'hashtags' if you want to be included on hashtags.org)</li><li>Play with your options so that you get notified how you want to get notified</li><li>Track #fanfaire</li><li>Post to twitter from your phone or your computer whenever you feel like telling your friends (and the world) what you're up to!</li><li>Use '#fanfaire' in your message whenever you're talking about something fanfaire related!</li><li>Have fun and know what everyone is up to! There's twitter integration to just about everything, including facebook... </li></ul><p>Feel free to message me with any questions!Calpus (wizard on Cazic)/Fawwr (shammy on Xegony)/Porb (shadowknight on Xegony)/RyanK (on the web)</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">DO NOT to use track via twitter... since it will appear as if it will track things, but it won't actually send you any results since its down atm.</span> </p>

[Amnerys]

Ok, I just started Twittering (Tweeting?) a few weeks ago.  How do I set up this hash tag tracker thingy?  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I looked at hashtags.org but couldn't find it there.

[kol]

I lied.. tracking has been turned off due to twitter not being able to handle the load. So, there's no "official" way to do it... for now at least.However, I'm almost done writing a twitter bot that will do the same thing. I'm hoping to wrap it up in a day or so.. or by the end of the weekend at the latest.Follow @tweettrak and I'll send out messages when its ready =)I'll also be posting here, and you can always DM me here or via twitter (@RyanK)... I'm happy to answer questions or help out any way I can!

[kol]

OK, I've gotten enough done with the tracking bot that its ready for testing!<ul><li>Follow @tweettrak</li><li>Wait for me to follow you back. (I'm going to automate this as soon as its tested a bit, or twitter gets around to turning on auto-following for me)</li><li>Send a message to tweettrak with what you want to track, for example: d tweettrak track #fanfaire (or just fanfaire or whatever else you want to track)</li><li>Sit back and enjoy the DM messages containing your matches. You may want to set direct messages to go directly to you phone, especially during fan faire... and, it may generate a lot of messages</li></ul>I appreciate feedback or suggestions... you can find me at @RyanK on twitter or on here as well.Enjoy! =)

[Tenamdar]

How do you know Twitter can't handle the load? Last I checked there were only two of us tweeting on #fanfaire?

[kol]

check out: <a href="http://status.twitter.com/post/38329626/end-of-week-update" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://status.twitter.com/post/3832...-of-week-update</a>or the rest of the twitter status blog... they have tremendous capacity issues and have dropped services (notice the track being red on the right side).You can still ask twitter to track something, but you aren't being notified when someone says what you're looking for.And, how do you know that only two people are tracking #fanfaire? and, since hashtags.org appears to be dead (latest tweet it has is july 10th) I wrote my own tracking bot last weekend.Its been working for about a week now with little to now issues. If you want tracking that works and don't want to wait for twitter to reimplement it... then follow tweettrak and I'll follow you back... (I'm waiting for twitter to turn on autofollow... (posted to getsatisfaction at <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/need_auto_following_activated_waiting_since_8_2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/...iting_since_8_2</a> still no response) until then i have to do it manually). then, just send a direct message to tweettrak that says "track #fanfaire" or maybe just "track fanfaire" since a lot of people may not use the #. Of course, if they aren't using my trackbot, they won't see your response.Also, I'd recommend that most people also add a 'track RyanK', but substitute your username. That way, you'll get to see replies from people you aren't following. I probably won't have time before fanfaire to implement a way to filter out people you're already following, but duplicate notices is probably better then not getting any.Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense or you need a hand with anything or even if you have any ideas to improve it.Thanks!RyanK/Calpus/Fawwr/Porb