

Show HN: Twilert – Emails in real time when your brand is mentioned on Twitter - joshmcmillan
https://www.twilert.com

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jaysonelliot
That's one of the best user experiences I've seen for explaining a service to
new users.

The very first thing I saw was a clear sentence explaining exactly what
Twilert was and why I should care. If I were the exploring type, I could
scroll through a lot more, but the big "Try it now" button was inviting, and
it delivered just what it promised.

The UI for trying out a search was actually fun, and the live preview feedback
was fast and confidence-building. I knew where I was and where I was going,
thanks to the breadcumbs at the top, and every step delivered a clear value
exchange as it led me down the funnel.

By the time I reached the point where I could authenticate with Twitter and
start using the service, I'd been shown what Twilert was, how it worked, and
what I could expect. You hooked me in.

Expertly done. I'm going to use this as an example for others who want to know
how to lead people from awareness to engagement smoothly and quickly.

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meritt
I thought Twitter's API only gave you access to a small percentage of real-
time tweets. Did Twilert obtain full firehose access or is another method
being used?

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dblacc
Its probably the firehose via one of the two data providers, is why the
service isn't free. Datasift is one of said providers, can't remember the name
of the other.

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me_bx
Gnip is the other one. It was recently acquired by twitter though:
[https://blog.twitter.com/2014/twitter-welcomes-gnip-to-
the-f...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/twitter-welcomes-gnip-to-the-flock)

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jawns
I've been using Twilert for at least a year now, and it works fairly well.

It should be noted, though, that the basic functionality that Twilert provides
-- email alerts when a particular word or phrase appears in a tweet -- is
pretty trivial to roll on your own using the Twitter API.

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extesy
I don't know their implementation but I can think of two workarounds for the
firehose issue:

1\. Paid approach: use some authorized firehose data resellers. That's
expensive, but if there are already thousands of users, that will pay off.

2\. Free approach: use poll-based solution to search for the keyword every X
seconds/minutes. When new tweet appears in the search results after the last
recorded tweet - that's your new tweet. This way it shouldn't miss anything
and you don't need firehose. Of course, to overcome request throttling limits,
you'll need to use multiple different credentials.

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grimtrigger
Built one of these for Reddit. No realtime yet but its on the way
[http://getredditalerts.com](http://getredditalerts.com)

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650REDHAIR
What's holding you back from making it realtime? My #/twitter handle is the
same as my HN name if you'd like to talk about it.

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grimtrigger
No reason except I wanted to launch as early as possible and then focus on
marketing. I want to put the instant notification on a paid tier, and that'll
take some time to build out. Email me at aakil@getredditalerts.com. Would be
happy to talk more.

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mehdim
Mention.com do it for all Social networks, and cheaper.

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gdelente
Social networks and everything else.

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Sir_Cmpwn
I'm wondering if this would get out of control as your company grows.

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unfunco
I think it would. All this is doing is shifting data from an optimised UI to
an unoptimised UI. Performing a search on Twitter and selecting all tweets,
and every now and then hitting the load new tweets button is free and easy,
compared with sifting through emails, and $19 a month.

~~~
xerophtye
Perhaps it needs to be coupled with some sentiment analysis, so that only get
instant emails for more _urgent_ cases, where a user is unhappy 9 or
_severely_ unhappy, depending on your preferences). As for the good tweets,
they can perhaps send a summary once a day.

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lpinca
It's nice, but why should i pay for this when i can write a simple bot that
runs 24/7 and does the same thing for free? At least add a free plan.

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hnriot
tried it and the results seemed random. I entered a well known brand and got a
tweet for baby aylesbury ducks that have absolutely nothing to do with my
search. I looked at the tweet and the whole timeline & profile for the user
and failed to find the keyword anywhere!

aside from the results being random it's an interesting idea. Better still if
it tracked sentiment and charted it over time for me.

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highace
The UI is excellent but it's hard to justify $19 a month for this. Just have a
Tweetdeck tab open, then you can reply to the tweets too.

