I'm calling it g_rouping
This very simple idea requires no 3rd-party services and allows anyone to group a bunch of friends together around an interest so that other twitter users can follow them. All you do is create a group prefixed with g_ and give it a meaningful name. E.g. g_cars g_food g_indianfood
I've created a twitter group called g_ultramobilepc and all I need to do now is to advertise it via my normal twitter acount as a friend grouping point. If you're a friend of ultramobile pc's, you follow the group with your twitter account and folllow the friends of the group to connect with like-minded people. Done.
As 'owner' of the group, I will follow you back and weed out the bots and spammers so that the friends list is higher quality than the followers list. You follow friends manually by hitting the friends page or use 3rd party tools that will automatically connect you with all the friends. (I need to test these before I recommend an particular one. Any ideas welcome.)
Obviously there is a lag between the time that bots follow the group and the time the admin removes them so there's a chance that you'll end up with a bot or two but i'm sure you can handle it. There's also no guarantee that a ultra mobile PC friend won't talk about bacon sandwiches too but again, thats a problem with twitter until it implements some sort of chat tagging, streaming or sub-acounts.
I haven't found a way to view the tweets that the group sees from its friends but of course, when you follow the friends, you'll see the tweets anyway.
I'd like to see others create g_ groups and test this out so go ahead. if this takes off, it will be easy for twitter to implement the g_ username as a group with special tools and that's something we all want to see. Go ahead and create one for your interest area and let me know if you have ideas or thoughts in the comments below.
P.S. I checked the T&C's and there doesn't seem to anything that prevents anyone from doing this and personally, I think that using a g_ prefix will allow twitter to enhance services for this groups idea.
P.P.S. You can follow me @chippy too!
I like this idea.
ReplyDeleteUntil there's a way to view the group's stream or "members" create dedicated accounts, though, all "group tweets" will be mixed into each member's regular stream. Adding a keyword tag would defeat the purpose of having the group, though it would be more searchable and easier to find potential follows. Also, as you say above, not everyone who joins the group will necessarily only talk about the topic. In fact, some already don't talk about it at all.
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be nice if members could be notified when new users join the group. Otherwise, we all have to check it regularly ourselves. Not hard, but if that's the case, then could just find like-minded people to follow by looking at *your* followers/following list (MIDMoves too).
You could enable the "new member" notifications to all existing group members by by redirecting or sending a copy of "new follower" email notification to some "email to tweet" service. So info about each new follower would be automatically tweeted to all members ;)
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great idea. I look forward to seeing this grow and move forward.
ReplyDelete