Twitter allows one to search, and provides RSS for search results, so you can feed it into RSS readers like Google Reader to keep track of Twitter references to your preferred keyword.
So I thought I’d set up one for Bentleigh, which tells me what’s going on in my neighbourhood.
Happily I don’t live in Springfield or somewhere with a name that’s very common, and most of the Tweets I see are about Bentleigh.
With one major exception: There’s a lady out there in cyberspace (in Charlotte, North Carolina, to be precise) who owns a dog called Bentleigh, and she loves Tweeting about him.
So amongst the updates discussing the pros and cons of the neighbourhood, or highlighting the presence of jobs, property, traffic snarls due to tow trucks, speed cameras, and really important FourSquare posts, there’ll be something like:
“I love bentleigh! His furry ass keeps me entertained!”
and
“Throwin on my uggs! Puttin bentleigh in his jacket! Quick walk before the snow sticks! :/ brrrrrr”
Yup.
Fortunately I’ve found that as with a Google Search, you can include a minus sign and a word you want to exclude from your results, so I’ve been able to filter out most of the dog references.
No offence to the dog, of course.
3 replies on “Local goss via Twitter”
Well, I guess it does show what’s going on in your neighbourhood. Not the sort of vision they’d show on Getaway. Can you add some parks/gardens? Bentleigh has some nice ones.
Woof.
Daniel, on a completely different topic, did you watch the Who perform at the half-time Superbowl show? You’re a Who fan right? I was wondering what you thought? I hate to say it, but I think it’s about time they give it in! Not that it was bad, but it wasn’t as great as they’re capable of! I found it telling that in the montage of songs, the one that was missing (at least I didn’t see it, don’t know if I missed it ) was the signature piece, My Generation! I suppose it isn’t such a good idea for a bunch of guys in their 60s singing “Hope I die before I get old!!”!