Twitter Integration How-To for ConcourseConnect 2.0
Posted by Matt Rajkowski on December 3, 2009, 2:15 PM EST
The latest feature for ConcourseConnect is Twitter integration. What we've done though, might not be what you would have expected. Here's what we did...
- We've assumed that there is already a popular web site out there, called twitter.com, and that users are either intimately familiar with it, or have at least heard of it.
- Next, we assumed that there are already exceptional front-ends for adding tweets to twitter.com... the twitter site itself, or any number of popular desktop and mobile clients -- or even just SMS messaging.
- Finally, all that we ask is that users enter their twitter id in their ConcourseConnect profile, and then when they tweet, they use a ConcourseConnect hashtag. That hashtag is configured per ConcourseConnect site. For Concursive, that tag would be #concursive once our own site is updated.
That's it... users can continue to use their favorite twitter clients and can post relevant information back into ConcourseConnect at the same time.
On the flip side, what you might have expected is for users to be able to post to twitter (or other social networks) from ConcourseConnect. Well, that will be a nice way to share information to other twitter users, but it's not what we have planned for Enterprise 2.0 customers. We think that users will be finding interesting bits of information on twitter through these clients and will want a way to share back into their ConcourseConnect community without having to visit the ConcourseConnect site at the time to post.
Concursive has started using this feature and you can also experiment with it on one of our sample websites. It's fun and supports what users are already doing! You can help us test this feature by creating an account at our Weekend Wanderings sample site, linking your Twitter Id, then going to twitter to post using the #social hashtag. The tweets will appear on the home page and other areas of the site.
Do you like this approach? Leave a comment!
The latest unstable version of ConcourseConnect can be compiled directly from the Google Code ConcourseConnect repository by following the Google Code instructions and using a subversion client. A stable build is not yet ready.
