Twitter User Streams API Announcement

Twitter infrastructure employee, John Kalucki, recently reported Twitter’s highly anticipated User Streams API will be in open beta testing in the near future. The User Streams API provides real-time updates of data needed to update a desktop application display such as TweetDeck. Therefore, this will allow tweets, retweets and all other Twitter updates to be streamed directly to these applications without delays or rate-limits/latency. For developers, the API will be available in the next couple of days for testing.

This will be a useful feature when attending an event, conference etc where you are monitoring tweets real-time. It will also be helpful for those monitoring a business or brand online where knowing what are your customers are saying on a more current basis is critical.

Do you see this feature being valuable for your business?

image credit: JoshSemans

Twitter Cleanup: Use TweetBlocker

Spam is even worse when it follows you to social networking sites like Twitter. I honestly don't get the benefit of having a Twitter account unless you're really going to use it. A new site called Tweet Blocker shows all your Twitter followers and grades them using an algorithm based on the content of tweets.

A+ being the best and F being the worst, it is easy to identify who you can block or unfollow them (if you are following them). I know that some people like when a lot of people are following them on Twitter, but as for me, I rather know who is following me and wonder why they're following me. Remember, spam accounts don't count as followers!

Who, When and How often do you Twitter?

I recently used a Twitter Application called TweetStats to diagnose my Twitter habits (addiction?).

This first chart shows my Twitter history, I started on Twitter in March 2007, I really started Tweeting in March 2009. I think this likely coincides with using TweetDeck, a great application for managing who you follow and easily ReTweeting great tweets by others.
















These charts show the day of the week (Wednesday) and the hour I tweet the most (11PM). I'm not sure what this tells us, except that I should probably get to bed earlier.












This final chart shows the Twitter personalities that I have 'ReTweeted' the most. Iconic88 is my favorite ReTweet, he is is an amazing, positive uplifting twitterer. I love to spread his positive messages. I even interviewed him on a recent Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast . Some other great folks to follow include Mashable (from the leading blog), Facebook Goddess Mari Smith and Help A Reporter founder Peter Shankman's @Skydiver handle.