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14th
November

Automatically follow people on twitter with twollow.

Jon Wheatley

Up until now building up your twitter network has been a tricky, time consuming task.

The task was made a whole lot easier when search.twitter.com was launched a few months ago but it still took a serious amount of time and effort to connect with people of similar interests to you.

Cue twollow. Twollow lets you specify up to 5 different keywords which you can track and then automatically follow any twitter user who uses those words. For anyone looking to connect with people with similar interests or people using your website or software, this should be a massive help.

More information in the video below.

Viewing 21 Comments

Chris 1 month ago 1 point
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Great little tool, although they will shut your account down...I was lucky that took the suspension off.

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http://www.mlmrescuer.com

nicofars 1 month ago 1 point
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is there a way to check if it really did action an Auto-follow (like last twitter auto-follow is "xxx" at 24/11/08 12:34) ?
As I am pretty sure it's not working, I set-up a few keyword including "sharepoint" and it didn't auto-follow anyone, even though this keyword has been widely used for the past 48hours.
thanks, great idea though.

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Rob Corbett 1 month ago 1 point
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Hey Jon, great idea man....

However it does not seem to be working for my twitter account MeetRobCorbett

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Rob

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HaHaGood 1 month ago 1 point
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A little problem:

How can I tell twollow NOT to follow someone?

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John Carson 1 month ago 1 point
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Hi Jon,

I blogged about Twollow here: http://blogs.gcigroup.com/fineprint/2008/11/20/...

Although not my preferred method of following people, I'm curious as to how the keywords are distinguished, or are the phrases "catch-all" for a string of words?

Please can you post a reply in the comments section of my post for others to read, or tweet me at johncarson and I'll post it.

Many thanks and good luck with your endeavours.

John.

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http://blogs.gcigroup.com/fineprint/

tedroden 1 month ago 1 point
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Seems awesome. Does it work historically or just going forward? Meaning, when I sign up, does it search for old records with "WhateverSearchTerm" or just going forward?

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1 /people/tedroden/ /people/tedroden/following/ http://tedroden.com

jon 1 month ago 1 point
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It only tracks new keywords, not keywords previously mentioned on the site.

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1 /people/j0n/ /people/j0n/following/ http://j0n.org jonwheatley

tedroden 1 month ago 1 point
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Awesome! Signed up, looks great.

How often does it update?

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1 /people/tedroden/ /people/tedroden/following/ http://tedroden.com

David 1 month ago 1 point
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So I tested this for a time and I must say, it just doesn't work.
I am only following 1 new person and that's just Jon Wheatley himself.

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http://captain-obvious.de

John 1 month ago 1 point
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Does this pick up every mention of the keywords? I Set up the keywords on one account and then posted a tweet using one of the words on my other account and did not get auto-added.

Thanks!

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David 1 month ago 1 point
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It's obvious you have to use your twitter-account to log in but maybe you should say that on the site, every other twitter mashup does it, too.
Also you shoould write something to assure the user, no mischief is done with their username+password?!

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http://captain-obvious.de

Roshan 1 month ago 1 point
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great i am using it right now to track my teckitech blog keywords

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http://www.teckitech.com

jamesmcdonald 1 month ago 1 point
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It's a great service jon, although a few additional features would be awesome. I think maybe some sort of list of followers expanding from each keyword would be quite cool. For example, for everyone who tweets "social media" ... you can then view a list of the amount of people who you are following, that have tweeted out "social media".

Nonetheless, another great idea.

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1 /people/jamesmcdonald/ /people/jamesmcdonald/following/ http://www.flockey.com

Anto 1 month ago 1 point
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This is a good idea. But god damn. It follows more or less news twitters, that tweet out news bullshit.

It can be good in some ways, but for people just wanting to follow friends, or family its a nono.

But none the less, good idea jon.

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http://imanto.com

Mark Guadalupe 1 month ago 1 point
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I guess you need to create a seperate account for your family+closefriends. and you'll need to get a twitt client that supports as-many twitter accounts as you can :D, I guess thats an idea I have never come across with some twitter apps :D, or I'll just do it myself...

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1 /people/mak1e/ /people/mak1e/following/ http://blog.webarchitech.net 1313757901 in/markguadalupe mak1e mak1e mak1e

Gareth 1 month ago 1 point
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So, for example, could I choose the words 'the', 'and' and 'a' and be following every single Twitter user on the interwebz within a day?

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http://www.hostedfx.com

Gareth 1 month ago 1 point
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Update: http://www.grabup.com/uploads/eba986da6211bdf20...

Let's find out!

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http://www.hostedfx.com

jon 1 month ago 1 point
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You caught me a little off-guard there Gareth. It's all fixed up now but some slipped through the net.

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1 /people/j0n/ /people/j0n/following/ http://j0n.org jonwheatley

Gareth 1 month ago 1 point
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Glad it's fixed, some moron was bound to try it sooner or later.

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http://www.hostedfx.com

jon 1 month ago 1 point
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We've added some security features so that can't happen.

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1 /people/j0n/ /people/j0n/following/ http://j0n.org jonwheatley

Dice 1 month ago 1 point
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How can I be as cool as you jon?

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