Monday, June 13, 2011

Messaging server for Twitter

Our mashup for creating information servers on top of Twitter has been updated. Twitter 411 service lets you easily build your own information system that used Twitter as a transport layer. The idea is very transparent. You can define your own keywords as well as data, associated with the selected keywords. Users will ask service via replies or direct messages in Twitter and receive responses as replies and direct messages too. Simply, you can send request with some user defined keywords and get reply with an appropriate response.

It is like old information services with SMS. Send some formatted SMS to service number and get reply. Now you can use Twitter for such kind of services. And @t411 plays a role of "service phone number".

User defined responses could be provided as some texts (of course, the keyword owner will be able to change/update the text any time) or (what is more interesting) as URL's for the external CGI scripts. So you can reserve a keyword and provide your own CGI script for the responses. The engine simply calls this URL in order to get the response. And the text of the original request could be passed as HTTP parameter.

The usage for this service is transparent. Just send reply or direct message to @t411. Of course, for direct messages you should be mutual friend with @t411, where replies could be used without any restrictions.

Some examples or build-in services:

test - just a test for the service
t stock_ticket. E.g.: t LNKD - returns price for the ticket. This service uses an external CGI script for getting quotes.

And by the way, it is automatically a mobile service too.

Technically, mashup uses appropriate components (including Twitter taglib) from Coldtags suite.

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