Dusty Tweets

SFSlim has been sending tweets (aka twitter posts) from Black Rock City. Proving that the playa isn’t as remote as it once was. As more people and their wifi devices start arriving, there will probably be more tweets coming from the people’s dusty tents.

As Laughing Squidrecently reported, there is now a Twitter Burner group. In order to post to the group you need to first follow the group and then just write a tweet like normal but add BURN to the start of your tweet. It will then automatically be added as a Burner Twitter (be patient it might take a couple minutes to appear).

Now what makes this kinda cool is that Twitter doesn’t have group functionality. This is all done with php/sql wizardry thanks to Kosso and Raines. Kosso worked out this TwitterGroups hack for Gnomedex and wrote up how he did it in a post on his blog: How I created a TwitterGroup for Gnomedex.

The only flaw I see in this technique is the potential for a massive flood of Burner tweets completely drowning my friend’s tweets. It would be better if Twitter had built in group functionality that you could keep separate from your friend’s posts. However, this hack works and is pretty cool. My thanks and geek respect go out to Kosso and Raines for whipping this up.

On Edit: I’m less liking the twitter group in practice. Whenever your friends post to it you see their post twice (once normal and once reposted to Burner twitter). It just adds clutter and kinda ruins the simplicity that makes twitter great. Real Twitter groups would be great but this hack is not it.