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OOOTwitter — Out-of-office reply for Twitter
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Would definitely cool to be able to pick a date and time instead of saying in X hours :)
@bentossell I'll add it today! Was running out of time friday night, so I went with the easy solution.
@bentossell - this feature was added to PowerPack for Mr Hoover last week and has the full stack using GNIP so means it's real time and reliable. Check it out at http://powerpack.io - it's under the auto replies section
Going out on a limb here, but as solutions like this begin to appear and gather mass (https://www.producthunt.com/tech...) I find myself wondering more and more if Twitter can develop into the next stage of external communications (read: replace email.)
@ernstmul No, Slack is solving the internal (teams) communication problems. In fact, one could argue that IRC was more external than Slack. While Slack requires you to have either a specific invite, link, or team name before you can even register to join that team, IRC was built on server "hubs" where tens, hundreds, and even thousands of teams all set up shop. Then, once you were on the server you could freely stumble into practically any channel and engage in "external" communications.
Slack on the other hand doesn't provide a public-facing communications channel. In fact, IIRC there is a 5000 user limit (may have been raised, or maybe can be raised at a cost) so it wouldn't take long for a popular company promoting their Slack teams to fill up.
On the other hand, what I'm talking about is public facing. Recruiters, B2B sales, customers, clients, affiliates, any type of communication with someone who doesn't work at the organization.
Yes, many organizations have used Slack (or other tools) to kill email within the company, but aside from some customer service ticketing solutions (which still generally rely on email) those same organizations still generally use email services for external communications.
Therefore, what I'm talking about is making Twitter that destination instead. It may require rethinking document sharing (hosted files rather than attachments) and a few other paradigms (e.g., blasts, newsletters), but with a relatively-small adjustment an organization wouldn't need to keep any email service for 1-to-1 communications. Plus, we would gain the added benefit of more resources going into creating the tools, such as yours, to help organizations make that transition a reality.
Cool product! 💪 I built something similar (for an other usecase) but always get caught by the spam filter for only sending tweets with @mentions. How do you prevent getting blocked? 🤔
@triplejberger I use the API to get all user mentions, and then the POST status update with a neat reply to the correct ID. Works live a charm. Haven't been blocked.
@triplejberger maybe because of the low volume then! Leaving out the @handles is easily done. Maybe let user enter some variations to their OOO.
Thanks for the heads up!
@triplejberger @ernstmul @handles @handle - you should ideally pay for a firehose license via GNIP.com and adhere to the Twitter rules - PowerPack has been built using GNIP and also includes the OOO but uses realtime PowerTrack. 👍
So this started with this tweet of @rrhoover https://twitter.com/rrhoover/sta... And since I had an free evening (which turned out to be an entire night), I decided to give this a go. Resulting in this Out of Office reply for Twitter.
It checks every 2 minutes for new mentions. If so, the system checks if you've already send a OOO message to that person, to prevent sending it over and over again in a conversation.
I have tested it to my extend, but since my Twitter is fairly quiet I would love to get some feedback on this one.
Let me know what you guys think!
@ernstmul SO COOL! Now if only you created this three days ago!
(I'm killing time in the Mexico City airport before heading back to SF)
j/k, you're awesome
@rrhoover - check your PowerPack account man - rather than a quick hack we integrated a life long feature so took a bit longer 😀 - it's got your name as the Commit code too 👍 Enjoy 🇸🇳
Should review the Twitter guidelines before implementing to be sure you aren't violating Twitter's rules and risking account suspension or deletion. This isn't to say it's not allowed, just that everyone should be aware of what is OK and what's not before implementing such automation. Per Twitter:
Automated replies and mentions
The reply and mention functions are intended to make communication between users easier, and automating these processes in order to reach many users is considered an abuse of the feature. If your application creates or facilitates automated reply messages or mentions to many users, the recipients must request or otherwise indicate an intent to be contacted in advance. For example, sending automated replies based on keyword searches is not permitted. Users must also have a clear and easy way to opt-out of receiving automated reply messages and mentions from your application.
Note: media or brands using auto-response campaigns must request approval from Twitter and may be subject to additional rules. Please reach out to your account or partner manager for assistance. If you do not have a partner manager but are interested in managed client services, contact us.
Haha so cool! Followed the conversation about this on twitter. Awesome to see it in action now! 👏
Summer Bod 2020