In less than two weeks, Amy and I will enjoy a little Web 2.0 milestone as we celebrate—likely in 140 characters or fewer—signing up for Twitter. Since doing so, one of my persistent projects has been to identify and encourage other locals to do the same.
Over the weekend, I finally made good on a months-long pledge to build a website that would archive tweets from local twitterers. The Indiana Twitosphere uses a WordPress platform and Charles Johnson’s great RSS plug-in, FeedWordPress, to keep tabs on the individual contributions of over 150 known Hoosier twitterers. Most of these people are from Bloomington and, more specifically, the IU School of Informatics, but I expect to test the limits of the plug-in by doubling that total by summer.
I started a Twitter group on Smaller Indiana to help spread the search into other parts of Indiana. Doing so could make the Twitosphere project bend a bit or break under the stress of other cities. Another Twitter project I am involved in threatens to do that just within the School of Informatics, so I am a bit wary about scaling up to statewide involvement.
There are some restrictions that keep the Twitosphere from being comprehensive and 100 percent accurate. The baseline for the project are the 2,686 posts that kicked off the site today, including some early adopter accounts that were so dormant their 20-tweet RSS feeds dated back to January 2007. It is unlikely I will take the time to go back and fill in the missing pieces, but Twitosphere should allow me to keep a master list of local Twitter members and build a nice repository for later research.
Are you twittering?