Comments on Tweeting Your Splendiferous Comments

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June 29, 2009 at 12:01am

“Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!” goes the battle cry of the post-Pepsi Generation: one where Twitter is our primary mechanism for our hourly, minutely, secondly opinions. There is so much epic-ness to a system that, at its core is text-messaging, but on a much broader scale is a whole new networking scythe, cutting through thick stocks of wheat, to bring us just a wee bit closer.

Twitter comments, as they appear on my site, are an experiment of sorts. Not of the Manhattan kind but of the “well, I have no idea how this will go, so it may suck” kind. I can report users who are abusing Twitter to our Twit-lords but they will still be cached.

Some of this is beautiful laziness on my part. I’ve already seen problems arise with merely two articles to my humble name. The first and most significant problem is that I can’t remove the “RT”: This is twitter speak for Re-tweet, which despite the many who think it’s spam, is appreciated. As anything procuring me more money and internet-fame is (Side note: I also understand that if I acquire enough internet-fame I’ll be able to trade it in at prize-desk for a Playstation 3).

Another issue I’ve noticed is that links to the article-in-question show up. Though, like a young Charlie Kaufman I enjoy the meta commentary as much as anyone, it serves the audience and the other commenters little purpose. Grand as it is and as much as it feeds my ego (a vacuous space with a constant sucking noise), it is a bit difficult to maintain flow.

It still feels like a good decision.

How I did it.

To use tweet comments with ExpressionEngine is a very simple process.

In my exp:weblog:entries tag I have an embed tag that looks as such:

There are two unique properties here. One, I’m loading a template called _twittercomments (I use the “_” for hidden templates) and two, I’m feeding it my site name plus the entry_id. This ends up creating an embed variable called twitter_search that has a value of hmft_24 for example. My Twitter comment template is this:

There are several sparkly items to notice here.

1. The Twitter Search Plugin is created by the great Lumis.com. You can download and view documentation here.
2. The Twitter search tag is then fed the embedded variable as its query. This means it will do a twitter search for hmft_24.
3. If the tweet is from me, I use an conditional to switch the class to tweet_kenny, which I use to style my responses and tweets differently; mostly to make my tweets look better than yours.
4. Finally, if there are no results, I encourage the user to comment, leaving my entries a little less-lonely. Feel free to steal this code. If you use it, let me know, as litigation is fine way to make a living

It’s really simple and with it I’m able to pull whomever uses “hmft_{entry_id}” or the hash-tag equivalent into each individual article. Also, with anything Twitter, remember to use the cache parameter.

Fuck Moderation! Fuck, Moderation!

Moderation is a fools errand for anyone addicted to substances and, like a fool, I imbibe all tweets as a sort of metaphoric amphetamine. It creates a primal, chemical instinct to be distracted by processing each of your thoughts. Applying this practical and reasonable “nothing in moderation” approach, I do not moderate the tweet results. This means you can tweet “#hmft_24 gopher pants” and it will show up on my site. I expect many a “gopher pants” tweets on this article, because you are all so very witty and charming.

Indeed, great as it is to have gopher pants on your site, I can track you down and rob you of your dignity if you’re causing trouble. Twitter-spamming is real, and I will pray upon the Twit-lords to aid me in your banning. This also means my website can be the billy goat to your bridge troll. If you want to mark this place up with the most audacious tomfoolery you can projectile vomit out that overmedicated brain of yours, feel free to do it. Jerk.

I am working on a Twitter Comments plugin for ExpressionEngine. More on this later, but it’s in the works. This way I can filter out results, retweets, etc. and leave your 144 carat diamonds shining majestically.

Insightful Argument Tradeoff

One of the many trade-offs I make with these comments-of-tweet is not having long-form conversations on my blog. As my favorite local malfeasant said (and I paraphrase): “Comments have become one of the best sources of information and blog-posting-encouragement that I have on my site.” While I would like to have a conversation on the site, the need or want to moderate said conversation right now is lukewarm, turning frosty. I do see value in this, and in having a much more open way to post and process what is said here. The audience size does not justify it, even though I hear that you are much smarter than any large crowd. As with everything on this blue rock, however, there is a season and the winds may change.

That, as the ominous “they” say, is that. Have an epic day, and may all your tweets be true.