Comments on: Automatically Respond to Twitter Messages

By: Jim DeLaHunt

Jim DeLaHunt — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:50:40 +0000

Thank you for the reply, Matt.

By: Matt Warren

Matt Warren — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:34:45 +0000

you can try a number of things to fine tune the search results.

use phrase= rather than q= to do a phrase match
use a geocode to get local tweeters: for example: geocode=40.757929%2C-73.985506%2C25km
add a language filter. ex: lang=en
use a since or until operator to limit the time. ex: since=2009-10-14

the full API Documentation is at http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-Search-API-Method%3A-search

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:17:13 +0000

I am having a hard time getting the sensitivity of the responses lower.

I used a random string of characters and tested it with my personal account, I did not receive a response. I then decided to use something I thought would not be triggered by ANYONE… “Fluffy Pandas” Believe it or not, sent about 10 messages out at once…

When I looked to see what may have triggered it, I noticed that one of the users being referenced had panda in the name… How would I adapt this code to specifically look for a phrase sent to the twitter account used in the code?

By: Matt Warren

Matt Warren — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:37:16 +0000

I was hesitant to post this code for that exact reason. However WRT the tweet I sent you – I did write the message myself and I was following these exact steps to post tweets before deciding to automate it. I tried to make it as natural as possible because nobody wants to get spam in twitter. I think this blog is pretty valuable to anyone looking to do something with twitter and python and there’s nothing wrong with letting people know about it.

By: Jim DeLaHunt

Jim DeLaHunt — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:06:01 +0000

I recommend being reaaaally careful with what terms you use to trigger the response, and what the response says. I received one of these responses. From the wording it sounded like a human pointing me to this blog because of something relevant to my particular tweet. When I discovered that it was just a robot trying to get me to visit the site in general, my gratitude for the link turned to annoyance at the spam.

So, Matt, I suggest you reword the response you use with this script. If the message doesn’t imply direct relevance, it will be more clearly an ad, and it would set clearer expectations.

By: tom.blog=

tom.blog= — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:44:59 +0000

Automatically Respond to Twitter Messages in Python…

Matt Warren has come up with a very elegant script to automatically tweet back to anyone who mentions certain keywords.Â Check it out here.
……

By: Matt Warren

Matt Warren — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:44:59 +0000

Thanks for the input. I updated the script.

By: tante

tante — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:38:44 +0000

for python 2.6 don’t use `simplejson` but just `json` (simplejson was moved to the standardlib in python 2.6), this reduces unnecessary dependencies. Do a conditional import:

try:
import json as simplejson
except:
import simplejson

No further code changes needed.