Twitter Track is Back Thanks to New Service from Particls
Particls, the one-time RSS feed organizer and alerting service, has today launched a new project they're calling "Particls Fountain." Although it's hinted that the service will eventually do much more, today its goal is simple. Particls Fountain will function as a replacement for the long-gone Twitter Track feature that once allowed you to follow topics of interest by keyword.
Unlike its predecessors, the new service from Particls is simple and straightforward. There's little setup involved to get started with Fountain; just choose the method that works for you. You can use Fountain in one of two ways: via Google Talk (or any XMPP client) or via Twitter itself.
Using Particls with Twitter:
For Twitter users, just follow @particls on Twitter. To track something, start your request with 'd particls.'
Example:
d particles follow "web 2.0"
will track all references to "web 2.0" on Twitter.
d particles follow "web 2.0", "web 3.0"
will track all references to "web 2.0" and "web 3.0"
Using Particls via IM:
If you would rather use your instant messaging program to be alerted about your tracked keywords, you can do so with any XMPP client, including Google Talk. To get started, just follow particls@particls.com. You can then use the following commands to begin tracking keywords:
follow "web 2.0"
will track all references to "web 2.0" on Twitter.
follow "web 2.0", "web 3.0"
will track all references to "web 2.0" and "web 3.0"
Will a Simplified Service Save Particls?
For whatever reason, the original RSS tracking and alerting service provided by Particls never quite caught on. Perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time. The service aimed to help us address our RSS/information overload issues before some of us even had any to address. But the concept behind the service was solid: a desktop ticker, instant prioritized alerts, easy sharing of RSS items, simple feed subscriptions, and so on. In fact, that version of Particls sounds a lot like one of our favorite desktop apps today, Snackr, which does many of the same things but launched nearly a year later.
We thought Particls 1.0 was a good first attempt at managing those sorts of issues, but it was not without its problems. The program was a Windows-only client, had some UI challenges, and, from personal experience, hit an older laptop's CPU just a bit too much.
Later, the company split the Particls solution into half, with one half becoming Engagd, an attention management engine, and the other half becoming Particls 2.0, the visualization and alerting engine. From the sound of it, those two projects have now been abandoned - the company notes that all resources have been diverted to the new project, Fountain.
Oops, a DM Limit
Unfortunately, there is one major concern regarding the new service, and it's not really Particls' fault. Currently, Twitter API limits direct messages to 5000 per day for whitelisted accounts. That will severely impact what the service can do using DMs.
Here's a video of Chris pondering this issue:
This API limit is a clear example of the sort of thing a company would gladly pay Twitter for access to, if only there was the option. It's unfortunate that Twitter's hard-set limits are actually affecting the abilities of other companies to innovate around the core product.
Yet that won't stop them from trying. For the record, Particls is not the first service to attempt to implement the missing Twitter Track feature. For example, the Twitter toolkit from TweetLater also provides this functionality. However, the difference between the two services is that TweetLater provides tracking via an emailed digest - not real-time alerts as Particls does.
Will Fountain be a Success?
Whether Particls Fountain will succeed where previous incarnations did not is something that's yet to be seen. However, the company is now actively working with the community and letting them drive the development. This critical step is vital to making a successful product, so it's encouraging to see the interaction.
Through the UserVoice site, 100 or so testers have already begun providing feedback about Fountain. They - and you - will be the people voting on the next step for the service, whether that's tracking your alerts history on the web, receiving an email digest, adjusting alerts through a web-based dashboard, or something else entirely.
If you want to give the service a try, you can do so today; just follow the instructions above. Besides UserVoice, you can also give feedback directly to the creators of Particls on Twitter: just follow @ashleyangell, @stephenkelly, and @chrissaad.
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This is very interesting.. thanks also for showing us example on how to setup Particls.
Gosh it has been a while...they still have Marshall writing for Techcrunch and Phil Butler writing for RWW! :)
If you want to replace "track" its easier if you
just use a client (like Twhirl) that has a search
feature (with persistence). I also use this to
"follow" people that I dont want to actually *follow*
( from:x OR to:x) and get to see tweets addressed to
them as well :-)
-- MV
I was wondering what happened to Particls. They were definitely ahead of their time.
Posted by: Corvida
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February 23, 2009 7:11 AM
@Mario: I agree that clients like Twhirl/TweetDeck/etc are great for when you're at your desktop, but given the IM option, you can "track" from anywhere - even your mobile phone.
@Corvida: Me too. I had high hopes for them at one time.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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February 23, 2009 7:19 AM
Interesting. I "signed up" for a few obscure work and business related terms just to see if any ever show up.
Posted by: Craig Eddy
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February 23, 2009 7:27 AM
How does one then unfollow...is it...
d particls unfollow "web-2.0"
?
Track has been "back" since last July thanks to Dustin Sallings and Twitterspy. I wonder how Particls will get around the 20K/hr API call limit that's been giving Twitterspy fits lately.
Posted by: Ken Sheppardson
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February 23, 2009 7:49 AM
@Ken: Twitterspy lets you use XMPP clients (http://www.techlifeweb.com/2008/07/07/how-to-set-up-twitterspy-in-google-talk/), but Particls also lets you use Twitter itself to track keywords - similar to the original Twitter track feature. I was not aware Twitterspy does this (I don't think it does?). Please let me know if I'm wrong.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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February 23, 2009 7:53 AM
It doesn't matter... there are severe API limits on DMs - we are all just dancing around the API barriers. Particls will either a) get Twitter to unlimit them for $$$ OR b) bounce off the API limits the same way TwitterSpy, justSignal, SocialToo, etc do.
Posted by: Brian Roy
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February 23, 2009 7:56 AM
Sarah: No, Twitterspy doesn't track via DM, although it'd be easy to add... if not for the fact that it's already hitting the API limit ceiling with ~900 users, and adding API calls to retrieve and send DMs would put it further into the red. If a DM interface is/was necessary for track to be declared "back", I guess you've got it now. I'm just a little jaded as every month or so there's been yet another service that gets promoted as the solution to the track problem, when they're certainly not the first.
Posted by: Ken Sheppardson
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February 23, 2009 8:11 AM
@Ken I see. I have to say, though, this is the first solution I've been excited about thanks to Twitter DM integration. But as the article mentions, the API limits are a deal-breaker for everyone who tries to solve the Track problem.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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February 23, 2009 8:14 AM
Sarah: The article says "However, those who use an XMPP client will not have any issues." They will, if the service is at all successful. Twitter limits API calls to 20K/hr, so if each user is tracking one unique term, at 20K users you can only look for posts containing that term once an hour. That's not quite the "real time". There are ways to work around the limit, but you're basically "hacking" Twitter and working around their intent, which seems to be to prevent services like this from taking off.
Posted by: Ken Sheppardson
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February 23, 2009 8:18 AM
@Ken: Aaaah, I see. I'll correct that now. Thanks for clarifying.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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February 23, 2009 8:19 AM
Hi everyone, Ashley here from the Particls team.
Please note that due to demand, the bot's autofollow feature is being flaky so it may not auto-follow you right away.
Don't forget to try the Gtalk bot as well, particls@particls.com
Thanks for the writeup - we hope Particls Fountain is useful to you.
We are still very interested in expanding this product to help users manage their attention across platforms, but we thought this time we would start small and let the community dictate features that get priority. To manage *our* Attention.
Feedback welcome!
Ash
BTW, Twitterspy is open source, so anybody is free to fire up their own instance, which would certainly be one way to avoid the API limit. Maybe somebody would like to see if they can implement DM before Dustin can, eh? :-) http://dustin.github.com/twitterspy/
Posted by: Ken Sheppardson
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February 23, 2009 8:48 AM
@Sarah : @Ken has a point. Twitterspy deos pretty much the same!
Also, you could really do the same thing with Notifixious. Just Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V the URL of a Twitter search (Summize) page search result into notifixious...
Example: you can track "RWW" by pasting this url : http://search.twitter.com/search?q=RWW
into http://notifixio.us
(I did it for you and you can subscribe at http://notifixio.us/sources/6331-search-twitter )
;)
Watching your DMs works. I don't think delivery via DM could work for any real life userbase. Don't think of it as 20k users * 1 track == 1/hr. Think 1000 users * 1 track * 20 matches == 1/hr. Each individual delivery is now a scarce resource.
Posted by: Dustin Sallings
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February 23, 2009 9:32 AM
I've been beta testing Particls for awhile and it's a great service. The DM limitation is a pain, especially for noisy or excessively large topic clusters, but really neat otherwise.