September 20, 2007

Twitter.com response time

I just did a couple of tests with host-tracker to get an idea of the response times of the Twitter website.



Test 1
Received responses : 37
Average response time : 1.93 sec

Test 2
Received responses: 34
Average response time: 1.92 sec

Test 3
Received responses: 35
Average response time: 1.09

Test 4
Received responses: 36
Average response time: 1.17

I have the impression that when I launch Twitter.com myself, it takes more time to load.

Unfortunately the uptime statistics for Twitter.com at pingdom have stopped working from August 7, 2007.

Does anyone else know others tools monitoring the availability or response times of Twitter.com ?

September 17, 2007

Followers, Friends, Fans, Admirers, Connections, Subscribers, Visitors, ...

My Twitter account has several followers, and I am following also several Twitter accounts. I have a lot of friends on Facebook. I have a few fans on Pownce. I have admirers on MyBlogLog. I have connections on Linkedin. Several persons are subscribers to the feeds of my blogs on Bloglines. The OneStat counter records the visitors of this blog.

Luckily, I have still friends for which I do not need fancy tools to meet and to have fun.

September 12, 2007

Twitstat

Twitstat.com is an initiative of Michiel Berger from The Netherlands. He was looking for a nice tool to follow the Twitosphere. If you have been away for a couple of days, the Twitter interface does not allow you to quickly spot the most interesting topics being discussed within the community of your Twitter followers. He developed Twitstat.com as his own solution.

Twitstat monitors the Twitter messages from the users following the Twitstat account on Twitter. On Twitstat.com the detailed list of Twitter messages from the followers of Twitstat account on Twitter is shown. Twitstat.com also shows an overview by day of the total number of Twitter messages indexed and the top 10 of most active Twitter users for today and yesterday. Launched only on August 22, 2007, Twitstat is live for a couple of weeks. Currently the Twitstat account on Twitter is being followed by 96 other Twitter accounts, mostly from The Netherlands. The previous days around 800 Twitter messages have been indexed daily.


Twitstat also offers the possiblity to obtain statistics for an individual Twitter user. The picture below shows an overview of the Twitter messages from Erwin Blom, one of the most active Twitter users in The Netherlands (see also the Second state of the Dutch Twitosphere).


Another interesting feature of Twitstat is the possiblity to see how often and when a search string was present in the indexed Twitter messages. The picture below shows all Twitter messages containing the word "Twitter".


The graphs shown by Twitstat can be improved. Only the left most and right most columns are labeled with a date. The current graphs only contain columns for dates with Twitter messages, dates without messages are not shown as data points on the graph. The graphs are not a correct display of the time distribution of the indexed Twitter messages. For an example, have a look at the graph for search string "pownce". There were messages on 30-08-2007, 05-09-2007, 09-09-2007 and 11-09-2007. The graphs contains 4 columns, only two of them are labeled.


A very nice thing of Twitstat.com is that everything is also available as an RSS-feed. You can even get an RSS feed to find Twitter messages from a given Twitter user and a given search string. This RSS feed gives all Twitter messages from Marketingfacts containing "tinyurl".

Currently, Twitstat.com isn't even in beta yet. The number of Twitter accounts followed is rather limited. The response times of Twitstat are amazingly fast. Will this be also the case if Twitstat becomes more popular ? I can imagine that keeping Twitstat alive will require some funding (e.g. for the storage of data or the bandwith) in the future. Will Twitstat.com remain ad-free ?

If Twitstat.com becomes too popular there is a risk that its usefulness will decrease. I can imagine a situation in which a Twitter user from The Netherlands is interested in a specific topic discussed within the Dutch Twitter community. If this topic is also discussed in the global Twitophsere (indexed by Twitstat) the search results for the specific topic will probably contain a lot of Twitter messages in which the Twitter user is not interested in. The signal to noice ratio will decrease.

September 8, 2007

Private Twitter accounts visible on Facebook

Messages from private Twitter accounts should be only read by other Twitter accounts that have been approved by the owner of the private Twitter account. I discovered that messages from private Twitter accounts can be read by other users on Facebook.

Peter Dedecker is one of my friends on Facebook. I am however not a follower of his private Twitter account. With my Twitter account I do not have access to his private Twitter messages.



Peter installed the Twitter application on Facebook, showing his Twitter messages on his Facebook account.



If you have a private Twitter account you have to be careful by installing the Twitter application on Facebook. This application assumes that all your friend on Facebook have also been accepted to follow your private messages on Twitter.

Update September 14, 2007
According to this blogpost new Twitter accounts cannot be accessed anymore thru Facebook. I just checked if I still have access to the private Twitter account used in the original post, which is still the case. It seems that private Twitters accounts that already are linked to Facebook accounts remain visible.