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Great Western Coffee Shop > Sideshoots - associated subjects > News, Help and Assistance > About Twitter feed @PassengerForum
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Author Topic: About Twitter feed @PassengerForum  (Read 19944 times)
grahame
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« on: July 10, 2013, 13:58:26 »
I'm experimenting with a new twitter feed - @PassengerForum - to be automatically updated as people post to the public (guest viewable) boards.
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grahame
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« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2013, 15:30:55 »
Please start to follow @PassengerForum and let others know about it too - this feed's come about as a result of user request, and my need to understand the new Twitter API for posting statuses onto a feed.   It means that occasional visitors here can have a quick summary come to them - usually within half an hour of a message being posted, and complete with a link to the page on which the new message is posted.

See profile of the new feed (and whether you think I've chosen appropriate images!) at https://twitter.com/PassengerForum
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JayMac
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« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2013, 01:13:53 »
grahame.

Should this feed/link not be a little more area specific? If linking to the Great Western Passengers' Forum (aka Great Western Coffee Shop) then @PassengerForum may be a little too generic.

Passing comment from someone who uses Twitter but sparingly, so I could be way off the mark, but I think I've got a handle on what makes a good address and/or hash tag. I think the words 'Great' and 'Western' need to be in there somewhere.

Changed of course in future years when National Express win the franchise and decide to go with a bonkers name.

To paraphrase Jim Royle. "One? My ar*e."
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grahame
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« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2013, 09:57:31 »
Quote from: bignosemac on July 11, 2013, 01:13:53
grahame.

Should this feed/link not be a little more area specific? If linking to the Great Western Passengers' Forum (aka Great Western Coffee Shop) then @PassengerForum may be a little too generic. ...

But how to get "Thames Valley, South West England and South Wales" into the handle?  I can tinker around with the description (and will probably do so) ... I'm not sure I want the / a company name in there, though. With "First Great Western Coffee Shop", every page comes complete with a disclaimer that we are talking about the company / franchise, and there's no room for such a disclaimer in a tweet or twitter handle.

I considered (and did not go for) running a series of feeds, board by board or area by area.  As it was in my testing I found myself being too aggressive and getting a ticking off from Twitter ...
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Chris from Nailsea
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« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2013, 23:28:31 »
Please pardon me if I'm missing the obvious, but could the feed not be called '@GreatWesternPassengerForum', simply reflecting the name of the franchise, rather than First Great Western as the current franchisee?  Tongue
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William Huskisson MP▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830.  Many more have died in the same way since then.  Don't take a chance: Stop, Look, Listen.

"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner."  Discuss.
bobm
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« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2013, 07:37:05 »
The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.  It makes sense when you think of people sending you messages and having to quote your username as it would eat into the 140 character message limit.
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ellendune
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« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2013, 08:18:39 »
Quote from: bobm on July 12, 2013, 07:37:05
The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.  It makes sense when you think of people sending you messages and having to quote your username as it would eat into the 140 character message limit.

How about @GWPassengers
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grahame
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« Reply #7 on: July 12, 2013, 09:35:02 »
Thanks for the inputs.  The initial purpose of the feed is (a) to produce an outward facing feed that occasional members who are twitter users can follow to get a summary of what's going on and (b) to help me learn the Twitter API version 1.1 which is documented, but its hard to find exactly the bits you need at times and work out a procedure for setting something like this us.  For both of those, the name isn't critical.

Looking ahead, though, where are we headed?  We're looking more and more at integrated transport and complete journeys ... and so I wanted to use a feed name that doesn't imply a limit purely to train, nor purely to a particular franchise / company.  And there's also more of an issue using part or all of a company / franchise name on a twitter account name than on the forum; every forum page includes a disclaimer that the site is not run by First Great Western, and there's no way that can be included within the 140 characters.
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Chris from Nailsea
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« Reply #8 on: July 12, 2013, 20:10:11 »
Quote from: bobm on July 12, 2013, 07:37:05
The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.

There you are, then: I was indeed missing the bleedin' obvious.  Embarrassed Roll Eyes Grin
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William Huskisson MP▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830.  Many more have died in the same way since then.  Don't take a chance: Stop, Look, Listen.

"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner."  Discuss.
bobm
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« Reply #9 on: July 12, 2013, 22:06:22 »
Not really - I only found that out six months ago!  Grin
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TonyK
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« Reply #10 on: July 13, 2013, 08:18:13 »
I am follower #13 @Nympton
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Now, please!
grahame
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« Reply #11 on: July 13, 2013, 08:34:27 »
& ' < and > characters have various special meanings in HTML▸ (Hypertext Markup Language) ... this post is purely a test to see if I've managed to fix an undocumented and unintended feature which caused them to display incorrectly in early "spike solution" testing of this twitter feed. 
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grahame
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« Reply #12 on: July 13, 2013, 09:26:20 »
And " fixed too ...
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grahame
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« Reply #13 on: July 14, 2013, 14:23:10 »
Further testing
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ellendune
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« Reply #14 on: July 16, 2013, 23:40:30 »
The sheer volume of tweets is just making it impossible to follow any other meaningfully. So the twitter feed is of no use to me.
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