What is Twitter Tracking?

July 19, 2008 · Twitter Features · 24 views · Print This Post

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I don’t frequent the Twitter support pages & blog often enough and in case anyone else doesn’t either, I thought I might add the Twitter Tracking info here as well to encourage people to use it cos it rocks. (The RSS with Summize (now Search.Twitter) is awesome and does the same thing except online, but for those who I haven’t yet convinced to go the rss way, or if you want to track things directly to your phone.. you can use Twitter Track pretty simply and get updates right to your phone or IM!)

What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned your name, your town/city, 9/11 or similar, a product you sell, or product you are thinking about buying? In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?

Twitter has a feature in-built that already does it, called “Track”. If you’ve set up your phone or IM on Twitter, you can send a command like:

track Facebook

When someone (anyone who updates in public) mentions “Facebook,” you’ll get it on your device in real-time. From there you can send “whois username” to find out more about that person, or “follow username” to follow his or her updates. Don’t want to receive anymore about Facebook? Toggle it off with:

untrack facebook

You can create as many of these as you want, so send “track drinking tea“, “track
iphone“, “track walking san francisco” and you’ll receive matches for all. Want to get a list of what you’re currently tracking? Send “track” alone (or “stats“). Turn them all off by sending “track off“.

Track words or phrases on Twitter

Twitter has introduced tracking, a feature allowing you to receive on your devices all Twitter updates that contain a word of choice. Send track+keyword to Twitter from your phone or IM to get updates containing that word. For example: track Obama to receive updates matching Obama.

Track your Twitter user name to get all of your @replies sent to your phone or IM. You can track anyone, anything, and as many things as you’d like; you can track mochi while also tracking Chicago and Aesop Rock. Use the other track commands to control what you’re tracking from phone and IM:

track earthquake
untrack earthquake
untrack all stops tracking everything.
track off stops all tracking updates, track on restarts them
tracks returns a list of words you track.

When I send track off, do I lose all of the keywords I was tracking? Yes. You’ll have to re-track all keywords when you use the track off command.

Can I track multiple items in one command, like: track britney, mochi, iphone? No. You have to track each thing in a separate command message.

Can I track from the web? No. For now, track is for phone and IM only. Web support potentially coming soon.

Will tracked updates include results from protected profiles? No. No protected updates will appear in track results.

Will tracked updates include results from profiles I’ve blocked? No. Updates from blocked profiles are excluded.

Source #1: Twitter Tracking blog
Source #2: What is Twitter Tracking? faq