Twitter Integration for New Threads

I know many members who use LQ also use twitter. While I've had an @linuxquestions account for some time, we're now automatically tweeting each new thread in a live feed. Note that this is beta and we're not guaranteed to keep it long time, but will do so based on feedback. Follow @lq_feed for a live stream of new threads. Note that both General and Member Intro are excluded from this feed, and to reduce spam impact the first post a member makes will not be tweeted. Let us know what you think.

--jeremy

(I had to reply since this is a zero-reply thread :-) )
Interesting use case for twitter. Love that you are looking at this. Each of these technologies presents interesting possibilities.

Any sense for how many threads are created during a normal day? 5-10/hr maybe? I probably don't want to see the full fire hose. I'm just not likely to respond to a debian or programming post due to lack of experience.

Maybe a per forum feed for the heavier forums in addition to the full feed? just a thought

I suppose I could extrapolate from this (from http://www.linuxquestions.org/):

Welcome back archtoad6
You last visited: 01-18-11 at 11:00 am
New posts: 1,003

& estimate 1267 / day, or just under 1 / minute.

1. What is the real size of the "full fire hose"?
2. Any idea of the peak per minute posting rate?

Pour it all on the twits jeremy ....

Maybe a should re-phrase that ...
or not.

Originally Posted by archtoad6 I suppose I could extrapolate from this (from http://www.linuxquestions.org/): Welcome back archtoad6 You last visited: 01-18-11 at 11:00 am New posts: 1,003 & estimate 1267 / day, or just under 1 / minute.

It's not new posts that are tweeted, but new threads.

--jeremy

Jeremy says they're only posting new threads, not every reply. That cuts down the traffic a lot. I'm still trying to figure out how I might use it. No way I could sort through every post and continue to follow everyone else I do.

Seems to me to be useful, they'll have to slice & dice the feed so I don't have to. Perhaps a fire hose feed as well for those who may want it.

However it works out, I like that he's trying this.

I've updated the feed to the following format, which should help those interested in filtering.

$thread_title $thread_url #$hashed_forum_title

Examples:

Virtual Users With Postfix, PostfixAdmin, Courier, Mailscanner, ClamAV On CentOS 5.5 http://bit.ly/dHgUiS #Linux #Software

and

envy24control for slackware http://bit.ly/eYszqY #Slackware

--jeremy

Good use of the hash tag.

So what kind of volume might we expect?

Roughly the volume you see now.

--jeremy

This feature has been stable and will be continued for the foreseeable future. If anyone has suggestions on how it can be improved, let me know.

--jeremy

I had to stop following it - too much of a firehose. Not all clients support search-based filters and it was overwhelming my other streams.

The posting rate for @lq_feed may indeed be a bit much for those using a client that doesn't allow filtering, but most clients that I run across do. The main @linuxquestions account has a significantly lower rate.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by jeremy I know many members who use LQ also use twitter.

I don't.

Originally Posted by jeremy Let us know what you think. --jeremy

Sure, I'd be happy to.

Although monitoring twitter might be a good way to stay abreast of new threads being created here at LQ, it's not something that I'm going to do.

I have no use for twitter, and frankly, no one cares to really know when I'm sitting on a patio picking my nose and eating my burgers (sic).

There are other methods Jeremy which, IMO, are better suited for me to use in keeping abreast of LQ activity - ZR threads, RSS, etc.

Now, I *would* be very interested in using a mini-twit sort of thing that LQ runs, which is specific to LQ, where each forum has it's own account name and I can choose to follow those particular forums, and I think you should set one up - it's a relatively trivial matter.

We've had many discussions about such a capability (to follow certain forums only), and whenever the subject comes up people are VERY interested.

But listening to a bunch of twits twalking about whatever useless things they have to say about themselves, and sifting through that garbage to glean the LQ nuggets which I seek (or creating yet another twit account just to follow one big, totally inclusive, LQ new thread creations), is not something that is going to happen on this end.

Again, as an LQ contributing member, I suggest we implement our own twitting service, with an LQ account configured for each forum and sub-forum, as a very effective and clean way for us members to follow very quickly, the creation of new threads.

Furthermore, by creating such a model (again, making a twitter clone is easy, lightweight, and a trivial matter), We could take it one step further and include all postings within threads, since an LQ'er would only need to select to *follow* the particular forums they are interested in, so all postings within a thread would not be too much traffic.



I hope that helps

.

FWIW, you can already get an RSS feed for any arbitrary individual forum or group of fora. We considered having a StatusNet for LQ but don't have any definitive implementation plans at this time.

--jeremy