brummie twits part 3 - mawhin_bot1 settles down.

OK. That'll do for now. @mawhin_bot1 is pretty well complete in it's first incarnation.

I've posted before, here and here, but to save the clicking I'll describe it again.

It's a twitter account, inspired by @peteashton and @BhamPostJoanna, which follows people who claim their location to be in the West Midlands.

It sits and watches some of the public twitter feed, and when it spots a tweet from a midlander, it tweets about it, and starts following the twitterer.

A couple of issues have come up.

• @kevin_rapley raised the issue I had feared, that not everyone located in Birmingham claims brummiehood. Some are, sad to say, even offended. And we'd best not even mention the Black Country. So announcements are are lot more cagey these days.
• Do you want to be followed like this? No? Block @mawhin_bot1. It won't try again. Unless it's broken, in which case, let me know and I'll (1) fix it, and (2) hard-code so it doesn't ever follow you again.

So far, mawhin_bot1 has collected 47 twitterers, ( actually 46 plus @bbcfooty, who also ain't real ). There's a bunch of background work still going on, and I'm hoping to extend this to handle several other cities/conurbations.

On the subject of locality, I think, I suppose, at the public transport level. If you're within a city's regular public transport network, that's a level of locality that's interesting. I think.

I'm quite excited about twitter as an application delivery platform. Especially with location thrown into the mix. Onward and upward!