If you spend much time following Twitter users in your area or listening to people talking about where you live, you may have seen a few more tweets tonight than you are used to seeing.
A few hours ago we began another systematic update of all the Twitter accounts that are maintained by Flaggpole. When I say all the accounts, I’m not just talking about two or three (we currently use @flaggpole for talking with fans and @flaggpolebot to send direct message notifications), but rather the 32,000 other accounts in our stable, covering most of the zip codes in the United States.
That’s a lot of Twitter accounts
How did we end up with the keys to over 30,000 Twitter accounts? The story starts back in January of this year, when our team started talking about how Flaggpole could interact with Twitter. In one of our scenarios, we hoped that Flaggpole and/or Flaggpole users could leverage these zip code Twitter accounts to help other people discover useful information that was relevant to where they lived. If someone followed their zip code (like @50309 for Des Moines), they could easily stay on top of notifications pertaining to their area.
While we haven’t yet begun to utilize these accounts (we’re still a bit fuzzy on the best way to use these accounts), we do have to post at least one tweet every six months to keep the accounts active on Twitter’s system.
So, a few hours ago, Jerry set up the API-based submission system to start tweeting through each of our accounts. If you search Twitter for “flaggpole,” you can see the results streaming in with roughly 15 new updates every 15 seconds. At that rate, the process should take almost 9 hours to finish with all of the accounts.
Always accepting feedback
If you have thoughts about how these zip code accounts on Twitter could be used to best serve the people living there, please leave a comment below. You can also send your ideas to feedback@flaggpole.com if you prefer that method.
In the meantime, please follow the zip code account for your area and ask your friends to do the same. Think of it as a rudimentary way to find the Twitter users in your area (check to see who is following the account).
Tags: zip codes