Lists, ReTweets and GeoLocation
Just prior to Hahlo4 launching Twitter announced that they would be adding a new ReTweet API, as well as the ability to geo tag tweets. And this week they’ve announced that they’ll be adding “lists”, a concept which other twitter apps have implemented, usually calling the feature ‘groups’. I had started adding something similar to Hahlo4 early on as an alternative to saved searches (which weren’t available via the API at the time).
You can read more about the coming ‘Lists’ feature over at the twitter blog. This is how they explained the concept:
The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses tools like those available at https://www.thepaystubs.com/1099-r-form-generator, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.
So I guess you’re all wondering when do we get to play with these things using Hahlo4? Well.
Lists
As yet no details about how the Lists API will work have been released, so its hard to say exactly wheat I will/won’t be able to incorporate. However, if the recent enhancements to the Twitter API are anything to go by, theres a pretty good chance I should be able to provide the same functionality that they add to Twitter.com.
Personally I’m expecting that it will probably function in a similar way to the saved searches API. Until we’ve got official word as to how the Lists API will work we won’t know for sure, but I’m looking forward to it.
ReTweets
I’m not the biggest fan of retweets in general, always been a believer that if I was interested in what person X was saying then I would follow them myself. After all Twitter’s tag line is/was “what are you doing?” not “what is someone else doing?”. However some people just love them, and as a result it was probably the most requested ‘new’ feature that people wanted in Hahlo4.
Seems that witter themselves have realised that a lot of people love retweeting and they’re adding it to twitter.com and to the API. Details about the API and how it works have been released (and changed several times) but as yet they aren’t active. But once they are I’ll start adding them into Hahlo4.
GeoLocation
Right now Twitter search uses the location from your twitter profile as the location for your tweets, but Twitter is adding the ability to geo tag you’re tweets with your actual location. So, for example, you’ve got your location set as “Chicago, Illinois” but you’re actually tweeting from somewhere in the middle of Texas, well you’ll be able to tag that location onto you’re tweets.
It sounds like this will be an option that is off by default (I imagine there will be quite a lot of people who don’t want to share their specific location for all their tweets). Again, this addition to the API isn’t live yet but once it is I’ll start playing around with it.
What I need/want from you guys
If you’ve got any thoughts, preferences, suggestions as to how you might like to see these new features work within Hahlo4 then please lave a comment on this post.
More info on these new APIs can be found here:
