{"id":224,"date":"2011-12-31T08:42:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T08:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/?p=224"},"modified":"2020-09-22T01:59:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T01:59:00","slug":"beta-test-for-twitter-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/beta-test-for-twitter-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Beta Test for Twitter Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my last two posts (see <a href=\"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/?p=185\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/?p=197\/\">here<\/a> &#8211; or <a title=\"Link to all twitter posts\" href=\"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/?cat=88\">here<\/a> for all my Twitter blogs) I outlined a few ideas I had for improving the twitter feeds that I have had running for about a year. The original idea was just to tweet every so often (about ten times a day), with each tweet being a random scientific publication. This worked pretty well but I thought that it might be more interesting\/useful if I tweeted on a particular subject over a 24 hour period. That way, followers would only need to look at my twitter feed when I was tweeting on a subject of interest to them. In fact, they would not even need to follow me, they could just subscribe to the service and when I was tweeting about a subject they wanted to follow, they can do this, simply by using the search options on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>I have spent a few hours getting an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">initial implementation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As it stands the system:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Enables you to register;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>You can choose which subjects you are interested in;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>When I start tweeting about those subjects I will send you an email and\/or a tweet (you choose). That is, just as I start a 24 hour tweeting session on your subject of interest, I let you know;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I did implement functionality where I would email\/tweet you whenever I did an individual tweet on a subject that interested you, but I disabled in, on the basis that I might be tweeting too often;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Although it is all in the background, there has been a lot done to ensure that you confirm who you are when you register, else somebody could register for you. What happens now is that I send you an email and you have to click on a link before your registration is confirmed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I am now welcoming people to register, in order to try and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">system<\/a>. I&#8217;ll class it as beta (just in case it all goes wrong!) but I&#8217;ll try to ensure that I don&#8217;t ask everybody to register again.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, if you do use the system, I&#8217;d welcome any comments you have.<\/p>\n<p>Like all these things, it is never finished and I have some things that I need\/want to do.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The most important is to get the database populated with better quality entries. The database is not too bad at the moment, but I have started the (long, very long) process of collecting more scientific publications, which are even more relevant than the ones I have there at the moment;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I would like to interact with the various publishers more than I do at the moment (which is not at all, except for the occasional retweet from INFORMS (thank you));<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>As well as tweeting on scientific publications, it would also be useful to have more generic tweets on a particular subject. But this is quite difficult to do; or at least collect good quality tweets;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I would like to extend the subjects that I tweet on. At the time of writing, I tweet on seven subjects; these being <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=BPP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bin Packing<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=GMB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gambling<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=GAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Genetic Algorithms<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=HEA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Healthcare<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=SPO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sport<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=SUR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Surveys<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graham-kendall.com\/twitter\/domainDescriptions.php?domain=VRP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vehicle Routing<\/a>, but I am open to suggestions from anybody who would like to see tweets on a particular subject;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Some of the subjects do need a little refining. For example, sport is a tough one as it covers so many different areas (e.g. different sports as well as injuries, predictions, gambling etc.). Surveys is also a tough one as it is not immediately obvious what a &#8216;survey&#8217; is. Anyhow, I am sure that the subjects will evolve over time and become more coherent;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>One of the problems I recognise is that if you are interested in one topic out of seven (and more in the future) you won&#8217;t see many tweets as it takes while for each subject to come round. Therefore, in the future, there might be a case for refining the system so that we have a specific twitter account for a given topic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In implementing this system, I have faced several challenges (such as how to register people, how to maintain a database, how to automate tweets). I will discuss some of these issues in later posts, as I am sure that other people face similar challenges and, perhaps (quite likely) I have not done things in the best way possible so I might be able to learn how to do something better.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my last two posts (see here and here &#8211; or here for all my Twitter blogs) I outlined a few ideas I had for improving the twitter feeds that I have had running for about a year. The original idea was just to tweet every so often (about ten times a day), with each [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,104,88],"tags":[90,66],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-tweeting","category-twitter","tag-automatic-tweeting","tag-php"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1672,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/1672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graham-kendall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}