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Automatically follow people on twitter with twollow.

Started by jon · 7 months ago

Up until now building up your twitter network has been a tricky, time consuming task.
The task was made a whole lot easier when search.twitter.com was launched a few months ago but it still took a serious amount of time and effort to connect with people of similar interests are you.
Cue twol ... Continue reading »

21 comments

  • Dice

    7 months ago

    How can I be as cool as you jon?
    reply
  • Gareth

    7 months ago

    So, for example, could I choose the words 'the', 'and' and 'a' and be following every single Twitter user on the interwebz within a day?
    reply
  • jon

    7 months ago

    We've added some security features so that can't happen.
    reply
  • Gareth

    7 months ago

    reply
  • jon

    7 months ago

    You caught me a little off-guard there Gareth. It's all fixed up now but some slipped through the net.
    reply
  • Gareth

    7 months ago

    Glad it's fixed, some moron was bound to try it sooner or later.
    reply
  • Anto

    7 months ago

    This is a good idea. But god damn. It follows more or less news twitters, that tweet out news bullshit.

    It can be good in some ways, but for people just wanting to follow friends, or family its a nono.

    But none the less, good idea jon.
    reply
  • Mark Guadalupe

    7 months ago

    I guess you need to create a seperate account for your family+closefriends. and you'll need to get a twitt client that supports as-many twitter accounts as you can :D, I guess thats an idea I have never come across with some twitter apps :D, or I'll just do it myself...
    reply
  • jamesmcdonald

    7 months ago

    It's a great service jon, although a few additional features would be awesome. I think maybe some sort of list of followers expanding from each keyword would be quite cool. For example, for everyone who tweets "social media" ... you can then view a list of the amount of people who you are following, that have tweeted out "social media".

    Nonetheless, another great idea.
    reply
  • Roshan

    7 months ago

    great i am using it right now to track my teckitech blog keywords
    reply
  • David

    7 months ago

    It's obvious you have to use your twitter-account to log in but maybe you should say that on the site, every other twitter mashup does it, too.
    Also you shoould write something to assure the user, no mischief is done with their username+password?!
    reply
  • John

    7 months ago

    Does this pick up every mention of the keywords? I Set up the keywords on one account and then posted a tweet using one of the words on my other account and did not get auto-added.

    Thanks!
    reply
  • David

    7 months ago

    So I tested this for a time and I must say, it just doesn't work.
    I am only following 1 new person and that's just Jon Wheatley himself.
    reply
  • tedroden

    7 months ago

    Seems awesome. Does it work historically or just going forward? Meaning, when I sign up, does it search for old records with "WhateverSearchTerm" or just going forward?
    reply
  • jon

    7 months ago

    It only tracks new keywords, not keywords previously mentioned on the site.
    reply
  • tedroden

    7 months ago

    Awesome! Signed up, looks great.

    How often does it update?
    reply
  • John Carson

    7 months ago

    Hi Jon,

    I blogged about Twollow here: http://blogs.gcigroup.com/fineprint/2008/11/20/...

    Although not my preferred method of following people, I'm curious as to how the keywords are distinguished, or are the phrases "catch-all" for a string of words?

    Please can you post a reply in the comments section of my post for others to read, or tweet me at johncarson and I'll post it.

    Many thanks and good luck with your endeavours.

    John.
    reply
  • HaHaGood

    7 months ago

    A little problem:

    How can I tell twollow NOT to follow someone?
    reply
  • Rob Corbett

    7 months ago

    Hey Jon, great idea man....

    However it does not seem to be working for my twitter account MeetRobCorbett

    Any thoughts?

    Thanks

    Rob
    reply
  • nicofars

    7 months ago

    is there a way to check if it really did action an Auto-follow (like last twitter auto-follow is "xxx" at 24/11/08 12:34) ?
    As I am pretty sure it's not working, I set-up a few keyword including "sharepoint" and it didn't auto-follow anyone, even though this keyword has been widely used for the past 48hours.
    thanks, great idea though.
    reply
  • Chris

    7 months ago

    Great little tool, although they will shut your account down...I was lucky that took the suspension off.
    reply

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