I am still spending a lot of time thinking about Twitter related projects. The @mkefood twitter bot project that @raster built for me has only made me more thirsty for other Twitter projects (it's also made me thirsty to get it finished!). I want to do more food twitter bots, a wine recommendation twitter bot, and a travel-related bot. I'd also really like to make some sort of mobile data retrieval service that I think could be really interesting.
Obviously others are thinking about twitter bots on the mind. Howard Lindzon described a service that he's helping devise with Soren Macbeth called Stocktweets.
It's a great idea. Here's what I'd do if I had thought of it...
1. Reply to @stocktweets with your stock picks. The idea of putting a $ in front of the ticker is brilliant. @stocktweets will then bounce your picks out to all folks following @stocktweets. If people don't want em on their cell phones, then they have that choice.
(If stocktweets gets too successful, you could always break it into different segments @stocktweettech etc.)
(Update, looks like Soren is discussing this option.)
2. Stocktweets needs a site. Looks like someone bought www.Stocktweets.com. domain bastards. Well whatever the site is, it has to compile data and then mix in a API from some financial service.
I'd love to see the bounced messages from @stocktweets include a link to one page that has a chart and news for that domain. Looks like these guys have found a way to pull data from FinViz. Very cool. I've included a screenshot of what that page should look like along the right side. If there are more than one symbol, well then it just lists multiple charts and news.
3. Start saving everyone's picks/trades. The homepage of stocktweets should try to make sense of all the messages. You could see what stocks are being bought and sold and attach a price and a chart to each one. I'd love to be able to track the current past trades of other @stocktweets followers. So stocktweets.com should build a page for everyone who @replies. One page for all the replies.
4. Finally the last thing I'd like to see is the ability to tell @stocktweets if you're selling or buying. Maybe send something like b$GOOG or s$GOOG.
With this addition, Stocktweets could start showing the reputation of followers. For example, you could see how much money I always lose on APPL and then do the opposite whenever I make a new trade.
Stocktweets could then combine and rank stock twitterers - almost like MorningStar used to do with fund managers (I date myself here, I'm sure there are better services now).
5. I'm leaving this line open because I'm sure I'll have some other thoughts in the future.
Good luck on building this and if you want any other suggestions or help, please contact me.
Random thoughts about twitter bots...
As I've stated before, I love sms because everyone has it, unlike probably any other technology out there (mac/pc, AIM/MSN, etc). It's a unversal messaging platform, even if it's somewhat limited.
Building something like this on twitter is a little scary. It's nice that they've solved the complexities of a text messaging service, which is actually REALLY nice. But they've got some technology issues (no pagination all week?). And when they probably figure out their technology issues, they'll probably turn to making services like this one and screwing the entrepreneurs. It's inevitable, I think.