Extra Prefix-style edit options to feeds.
Mark
via web
This suggestion relates to the other topics "API bot / Script bot / Bot unsure of what to say when spoken to and needs to ask his creator" and also "Feed prefix", but more so the latter.
In addition to adding a prefix to feeds being sent to twitter I would love the ability make very simple edits to feeds as they go out. At its simplest this would merely be a rule to remove text from the feed. E.g. click check box next to "Remove text" field, then enter text to be removed into box "word" or whatever.
I have a desire to feed the "@user" feed back into the "user" account, but need to remove the "@user" mention to prevent an "infinite loop" of sorts from occuring. Adding this feature would definitely turn me into a full fee paying customer sooner, and spare me the hassle of playing around with yahoo pipes.
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2 Posted by chris on 29 Jan, 2010 12:34 AM
I like the idea of being able to add or remove text to the feed bots, especially the original @user. Something like "via @user" to the end would be cool. The bitly url is not necessary from our view, maybe a checkbox to turn off.
As far as the infinite loop type stuff, we did this with our feed from Twitter.
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=-from%3Aportlandbars+%23por...
This creates a feed based on a hash tag #portlandbars but excludes any tweets from the user @portlandbars to avoid the infinite loop. We kind of stumbled on this, not really documented in the Twitter API.
3 Posted by Mark on 29 Jan, 2010 02:48 PM
Chris, thanks very much mate, much appreciated!
Pulling the feed from search term: "-from:user @user" solved my problem with the infinite loop and is exactly what I needed.
When you give such an easy and simple solution to my problem I shake my head and almost . . . facepalm
However, I'd still love to see Tweet Hopper support simple edits to outgoing feeds/tweets. While the solution you propose will suffice, it would still be preferable to remove the "@user" text / link from outgoing tweets and also the bit.ly url; both are an unneccessary distraction to the "user" tweet feed.
Support Staff 4 Posted by Josh Owens on 29 Jan, 2010 03:26 PM
I am all for allowing slight edits to the text we post to twitter, my worry is how to handle it in an interface. We use ruby and I could expose things via a template language like liquid for you to customize what we post.
Also, this sounds more like you want a retweet job, which would use the new retweet api functionality? Might be a good fit for Chris too.
--Josh
5 Posted by chris on 30 Jan, 2010 10:34 PM
Yeah, we just figured out how to use your feed bot to work as a retweet bot. Honestly one of your competitors has exactly what we want from a feature standpoint, however there are two reasons we don't use them. They don't allow twitter feeds as the source feed and they only run their job every 1/2 hour. But their feature set is just about right:
Couple Other Items
- Do not allow for infinite loops - Username Filter (only post based on usernames - possibly multiple usernames)
Cheers,
Chris
Support Staff 6 Posted by Josh Owens on 31 Jan, 2010 10:21 PM
Chris,
Which competitor? I ask because I am curious as to their UI. Since it is just me doing UI, I find I move at a slower pace until I figure out something that works.
7 Posted by chris on 01 Feb, 2010 03:43 AM
http://twitterfeed.com/
8 Posted by Mark on 07 Feb, 2010 08:22 AM
I also checked out TwitterFeed and agree with Chris' assessment of their feature set and limitations that - for both of us it seems - make TweetHopper a more desireable option and worth the money.
Josh, you're right of course, the function I was after in this case is as a retweet job / bot.
Thanks to both of you for your support!
Cheers,
Mark
wendy closed this discussion on 05 May, 2010 03:54 PM.