Replacing Twitter’s Track Function

Monday, 07.07.08

Replacing Twitter’s Track Function

So, I just realized how many messages I have been missing on Twitter since the crew there removed the Track feature. I know that the lack of the track feature was really having an impact on the value of the service (see my previous post on The Ideal Twitter Setup and tracking your Twitter username) but I was still surprised at some of the things I was missing when I started looking into it on Summize — the only service that Twitter has not killed XMPP access to at the current time.

Instead of missing more Tweets, I decided to create a Yahoo! Pipe (my first one — very cool stuff guys!) using Summize to replace Twitter’s Track function:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/toddsampson/twittertrack

Just go to the page above, enter your Twitter username and you are all set. The results from the Pipe can be put into your favorite RSS reader, emailed to you or sent to your phone so you get the Tweets in near-real-time. Enjoy!

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by Todd Sampson · Tags: Applications · Tech Hack

Viewing 8 Comments

Joe Lazarus 1 year ago 2 points
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Nice work. Summize has some advanced search operators that output similar RSS. Here's an example that generates a feed with the same data as your Pipe:

http://summize.com/search.atom?q=%40toddsampson

That's based on a search for "@toddsampson". The advantage of going straight to Summize is that you'll get the updates in a more timely fashion. Pipes caches results every hour or so.

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51 /people/joelaz/ /people/joelaz/following/ http://joelaz.com in/joelazarus joelaz joelaz joelaz

toddsampson 1 year ago 1 point
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Thanks Joe! Man, that's so much easier. :) I just assumed Summize would only do text filtering.

I will probably still use the pipe for the routing to my phone -- unless you have a recommendation on something that does that more efficiently. Or, better yet, push them back to a separate twitter account (like "toddsampson-track") that I am following with device updates on.

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5 /people/toddsampson/ /people/toddsampson/following/ http://www.toddsampson.com

robjohnson 1 year ago 1 point
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as for pushing back to a separate twitter account (warning - forthcoming is only tangentially related), have you seen @seattlemash yet? it's a special twitter account we set up to push out all the tweets from attendees to Mashable's Seattle SummerMash event. It's partly based on MyBlogLog technology - using API to discover twitter names -- and I'd love to know what you think.

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4 /people/robjohnson/ /people/robjohnson/following/ http://twitter.com/robjohnson rnjohnson robjohnson

toddsampson 1 year ago 1 point
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I hadn't seen SeattleMash... very cool Rob. You guys continue to rock it. (And, of course, I love the MyBlogLog mashup.) Keep up the great work.

I really can't wait for Twitter to finally get oAuth integrated back into the product -- not to mention integration with Gnip -- so we can automate & improve things like this.

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5 /people/toddsampson/ /people/toddsampson/following/ http://www.toddsampson.com

panini 4 months ago 1 point
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this helped me a lot. and i hope twitter will return their trackback function

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0 /people/printer1/ /people/printer1/following/ http://unilinkinc.com/panini.php

Mackintosh jewellery 10 months ago 1 point
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twitter has been trying to do this for a long time. though not sure if the succeeded, its a really worth try

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1 /people/Mackintoshjewellery/ /people/Mackintoshjewellery/following/

abnehmen 5 months ago 1 point
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I will probably still use the pipe for the routing to my phone -- unless you have a recommendation on something that does that more efficiently. Or, better yet, push them back to a separate twitter account (like "toddsampson-track") that I am following with device updates on.

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http://www.vitabits.de/

Change Legal Name 4 months ago 1 point
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Hi Todd. I really appreciated the post of yours featuring how to track your Twitter username. It really came handy especially for Twitter newbies like me.

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1 /people/afterburner/ /people/afterburner/following/ http://www.easynamechange.ca