Adam Green
Twitter API Consultant
adam@140dev.com
781-879-2960
@140dev

Twitter API Tools: Common library files

February 11, 2014

The collection of API tools will only need a few library files: db_lib.php, oauth_lib.php, and Matt Harris’ tmhOAuth library. These are all packaged together in a convenient zip file, ready for download. Here’s a summary of what you’ll find inside, and then we’ll look at the library code: cacert.pem – SSL certificate used by tmhOAuth […]

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New project: Twitter API Tools

February 11, 2014

I already have two sets of open source Twitter API code: the streaming API framework, and my Engagement Programming book. Both of require a fair amount of setup, and the code is very interrelated. This new project will be a set of individual tools that can be run by themselves or called from any application […]

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Future directions for streaming API code

February 9, 2014

My latest set of enhancements to the streaming API framework is moving along nicely towards my goal of making this code a true production level tweet collection system. While I’m waiting for feedback on the new code, I wanted to take a minute to think about where this system can go. I see several possible […]

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Streaming API enhancements, part 5: Purging old tweets and related data

February 8, 2014

I wanted to fit one more enhancement into this new version of the streaming API framework. The major limit on performance of a tweet collection system is the number of rows in each table. This is most important during the parsing phase, when lots of insertions are done. MySQL slows down dramatically when it has […]

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Streaming API enhancements, part 4: Parsing tweets for keywords

February 8, 2014

This set of changes is a significant improvement to parse_tweets.php. To allow you to use this separately from the production version, I’m calling it parse_tweets_keyword.php. You can place it in the same /db directory as the rest of the streaming API framework code. The only changes you will have to make is adding the following […]

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Lead Generation: Data mining Twitter lists for the best leads

February 5, 2014

Twitter lists don’t get the respect they deserve, but here is a way to use a well curated list as the source of great leads. You could just use the members of a list as leads themselves, but that will only give you a few hundred accounts. If you use the following procedure, you can […]

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Streaming API enhancements, part 3: Collecting tweets based on table of keywords

February 5, 2014

Yesterday I introduced the database changes needed to control tweet collection with a table of keywords. Now we can modify get_tweets.php to collect tweets based on the contents of the collection_words table. To avoid confusion with the production version of get_tweets.php, I’m calling this new version get_tweets_keyword.php. This will let you place it in the […]

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Streaming API enhancements, part 2: Keyword collection database changes

February 4, 2014

The previous post had an overview of my planned enhancements to the streaming API framework. The first step is adding some new tables to the 140dev tweet collection database: collection_words The words in this table will be used to collect matching tweets. We’ll see how to add this to the get_tweets.php script so that the […]

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Streaming API enhancements, part 1: Keyword collection enhancements

February 4, 2014

The next few posts will describe a set of enhancements to the streaming API framework that will greatly expand the capabilities of the code for collecting tweets based on keywords. I thought I’d start with an overview of what I want to accomplish: Add a collection_keywords table to the database to hold keywords to be […]

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Gaining Followers: Use the right tags in your account bio

February 4, 2014

My last post on lead generation described the best techniques for identifying popular tags for any subject. You can use this approach to select accounts to follow, but that is just half of the solution. You also want these accounts to follow you back. When you follow someone, the most likely thing that person will […]

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Lead Generation: Discover the most popular tags in user descriptions

February 4, 2014

Searching for hashtags is a common method of finding new leads on Twitter, but tags in tweets can be misleading. Sarcasm and irony are so often used in tweets that finding a tag doesn’t tell you if that user is for or against the tag’s meaning. In fact, tags are often used in tweets to […]

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Lead Generation: Qualifying leads by age of account and last tweet date

February 4, 2014

Getting thousands of potential leads for any topic is no problem with the Twitter API. Identifying the best leads is the real challenge. There are two dates that can be effective in this task: the date when the Twitter account was created, and the date of the last tweet sent by the account. I like […]

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