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Tweader: Yet Another Attempt at Tracking Twitter Conversations

Written by Corvida / September 20, 2008 10:31 AM / 6 Comments

We really wish Twitter would have implemented threaded replies into the service when it first launched. This would've made it much easier to track conversations across Twitter. Instead Twitter users have to rely on a host of conversation tracking services to fill the void that Twitter has left wide open. Summize, now Twitter Search, is one of the best services for tracking conversations on Twitter. While many tools exist, only a handful correctly deliver on their promise. Tweader is the latest Twitter conversation tracker to hit the market. However, it doesn't deliver on its promise correctly either.

Using Tweader

Tweader is very simple to use. All that is required is the ID of the message in the conversation you're trying to track. You can find the ID by clicking on the time-stamp of the message. Clicking on the time-stamp will take you the page of the twitter message. At the end of the url for the message will be 9 digits. This is the ID number of the message. Tweader will grab any part of the conversation that happens before the message that you entered. You can view the conversation in three different styles: regular, chatty, leftward. These styles provide a very basic styling that changes the background image behind each message.

Broken Promises

There are a host of problems with Tweader, which is why we feel it doesn't do what its designed to do in a way that's beneficial to users. As aforementioned, the service only tracks conversations that happen before the message you enter. Providing information of the entire conversation is what we call "tracking the conversation". Isn't that the purpose of the service? Why are we only receiving what comes before and not after? Secondly, Tweader is relying heavily on what Twitter says. Instead, the service should use semantic technology to gather context clues to provide better conversation results. If it had it might have provided the correct response for this conversation:

On the other hand, Twitter Search had no problem keeping track of the same conversation:

Words of Advice

Anyone can throw together a bunch of code that pulls the information that Twitter already provides. In doing so, you're creating a half-baked product. Creating something useful requires you to go the extra mile and provide what several other services are too lazy to provide. Tweader has a great user interface and it's dead simple to use. However, none of this matters because it doesn't correctly deliver on its promise. Tweader will be useful for those that don't "tweet" much. However, if you're an @ reply fanatic, stick with Twitter Search.


Comments

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  1. I just wish Twitter would implement this feature already...

    Posted by: Raphael | September 20, 2008 11:17 AM



  2. Hey, I'm the guy behind Tweader. First off, I'm really glad that you wrote about the service, and was honest about the review.

    I don't think that working on adding in messages thathappen before the actual status ID will be possible. As for the semantic search, I'm not sure if that's possible either within the limits of the Twitter API, but I'm working on it. :)

    I'm sorry that you feel it's a half-baked product, but I'll get in touch with the Twitter team and try to make it a nice delicious fully-baked good.

    Again, thanks.
    - Sahil.

    Posted by: Sahil | September 20, 2008 11:17 AM



  3. Hey, I'm the guy behind Tweader. First off, I'm really glad that you wrote about the service, and was honest about the review.

    I don't think that working on adding in messages that happen before the actual status ID will be possible. As for the semantic search, I'm not sure if that's possible either within the limits of the Twitter API, but I'm working on it. :)

    I'm sorry that you feel it's a half-baked product, but I'll get in touch with the Twitter team and try to make it a nice delicious fully-baked good.

    Again, thanks.
    - Sahil.

    Posted by: Sahil | September 20, 2008 11:17 AM



  4. http://tweader.com/conversation/928490672/ it worked there apparently d:-)...

    Posted by: Johnny | September 20, 2008 11:26 AM



  5. Well, Plurk has natively a great interface that helps users to track conversations... Why it is not as hyped (or celebrated) as Twitter

    Posted by: [caiocesar] | September 21, 2008 9:29 AM



  6. this sucks. my status number doesn't work. probably because of twitter's attempt to censor me http://zz.gd/a9435a

    Posted by: Noah David Simon Posted on FriendFeed   | September 21, 2008 12:55 PM



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