Twitter Trackback Machine – <hackback>
Last night, I sat down and created a Twitter trackback service. I fondly refer to it as <hackback>. Thanks to the crew at Terraminds, I have a solution for accessing Twitter’s data en masse. They’ve allowed me to preview an unpublished API, and the API is one of the keys to searching Twitter for the links that are required for this service.
I successfully ran the service against live data from Terraminds and generated a trackback from a Twitter post to a public blog. The result is shown below:
So now I have several things to consider. I’m not sure if I should implement the service.
Ethical Dilemma: While it is true that Twitter Posts are public, Twitter users don’t currently expect their posts to result in blog trackbacks. Although the behavior is very useful in helping to complete a conversation, it could also be viewed as unwanted. Some folks might not want their posts to generate trackbacks.
Business Dilemma: This service will probably not generate any revenue, yet there are costs to running and maintaining the service. There are bandwidth charges that could be incurred due to the number of web pages that must be accessed. There could be storage charges, especially to implement the pingback approach. Finally, there is the time that it takes to fix bugs and add additional features.
Should I implement the service? How would you feel if one of your Twitter posts suddenly made its way onto a blog without your prior knowledge?
Is it a good business decision? Remember, if I have some sort of opt-in process, that will seriously reduce the number of potential trackbacks that can be collected. It would also increase development efforts and data usage as I’d have to track the additional data.
There’s no money in this (at least that I can see) because it’s all behind the scenes. You can’t place ads on something with no user interface.
So I have the solution for the trackback problem. What next?
[Update]
The service follows tiny urls (any service) to the original link.
Hans said,
Wrote on February 7, 2008 @ 10:46 am
you are right with the ethical issue. I see the advantages of hackbacks, but I think twitter should stay more like spoken word. Sometimes you don’t want everything that you’ve said in the past to be recalled at any time.
Business: that’s where creative minds usually come in and make something that might not create income still make economical sense – or even make money on it… how does twitter even support itself? Is it just a publicity stunt or actually cash revenue?
Mike Keliher said,
Wrote on February 7, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
Doesn’t most blogging software treat a trackback like a comment? That would give the trackback recipient some level of say in the matter, eliminating or reducing at least one of your concerns.
As for whether this is worth it to implement, I personally wouldn’t put money into it. It might be nice but not crucial. Just my $0.02.
Shannon Whitley said,
Wrote on February 7, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
Hans,
I think you’re right that most people think of Twitter like the spoken word, but it is indexed and searchable in tools like Google. And yes, I don’t know how they make money either.
Mike,
I agree, and I’m not really worried about the blog owners, unless it turned into spam, but I’m wondering if the person who writes the post really wants it to become a trackback without their approval.
Regarding the expense — yes, this just might be another programming exercise for fun.
Joseph Wheeler said,
Wrote on February 7, 2008 @ 6:43 pm
I’d say do it. But your right there is prolly no way to make money.
TweetTrack : Broerse Blog said,
Wrote on February 23, 2008 @ 6:03 am
[...] Shannon Whitley created a script that inverts the tiny URL’s used on twitter to the full links to this blog. See this TweetTrack response to this post. Interesting script because now I can see every time someone links to my Blog from Twitter. I hope it can block the spammers. I also hope it will not loop in some way, but perhaps that is impossible. [...]
Broerse Blog said,
Wrote on February 24, 2008 @ 1:16 am
TweetTrack Blacklisted by Spamfilters
After just 24 hours TweetTrack is Blacklisted by Spamfilters. See this comment by Shannon. I liked the service so I hope he will find a way to whitelist TweetTrack in the Spamfilters. The problem is that TweetTrack has an Opt-Out like model with no Ou…
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Wrote on July 3, 2008 @ 6:11 am
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Wrote on December 2, 2008 @ 5:51 am
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Robin Grant said,
Wrote on January 10, 2009 @ 9:59 am
Hi Shannon – is this available to download from anywhere? Would really like to get this going on my site. Could you let me know?
thanks in advance
Jan Thoresen said,
Wrote on February 9, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
I am the editor of a 550K/Unique Weekly website. I would love to pay for having this service in addition to the Twingly-powered trackback we already use.
jamesrbuk (James Ball) said,
Wrote on May 22, 2009 @ 3:22 am
Twitter Comment
@LauraOliver [link to post] – not tried it myself though
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Chacaal said,
Wrote on December 3, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
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)))