Twitter tracking: your very own, cuddly Echelon system

I’ll blog more about FOWA shortly. I was struggling with a fluey baby and toddler last week, so didn’t get a chance to finish wriiting about what was one of the most interesting conferences I’ve attended for some years. In the meantime, I wanted to mention Twitter’s new tracking feature, which is a blast. Send ‘Track [keyword]‘ and you’ll start receiving any public tweets which contain that keyword. It’s a bit like having your own personal, take-anywhere Echelon system (except without the sinister, Orwellian overtones). Among other things, I’ve been tracking ‘FOWA’, ‘rumours’ and a certain four-letter obscenity beginning with C. Not many interesting rumours, but perhaps tracking the US spelling too would throw up more tweets (d’oh! – only just thought of that). FOWA is certainly cropping up a fair bit, especially since organiser Carsonified started putting up MP3s of the presentations. And tracking the C-word has yielded at least one tweet that begs to become the title of a short story: “My twin is a C***!”