B2B on Twitter

This is nice to see:

[twitter.com] http://twitter.com/BandToBandcom/

I'd recommend including a link to the album entry, like on Facebook.

[ETA: Never mind, I see the feed is adding links now.]
[ETA2: See below -- it's now: [twitter.com] http://twitter.com/BandToBand/]

Next step is to see if we can get the @BandToBand handle from the radio program that is currently using it. I'm going to email those guys soon.


Kevin

What's that background image? Looks like a cool visualization. :->

Here's an idea: if a band uses a specific hash tag, let's store that in the database and use it for automated Tweets about that band.
e.g. #a7x for Avenged Sevenfold

I agree that we should embed references back to the original band. I'll admit that I'm not super hip to Twitter in general so can someone explain which would be better: using '@' or '#'?

If we add a Bruce Springsteen album, should it read:

@Springsteen "Born In The USA" has been added to the family tree: <link>

How is that much different than '#'? I don't fully understand myself (I'm just getting old).


Kevin

BTW: The background image was something I did years ago trying to show all the bands that released a record in the 1980s. The data is probably insufficient at this point but was an exercise to see if anything interesting would come of it. Here's the full version:

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/images/sociograms/1980s.gif


Kevin

The girl who was running the Twitter handle @bandtoband was kind enough to let us have it as she wasn't using it any more. So we're now on the correct:

[twitter.com] https://twitter.com/BandToBand


Kevin

Someone may know this better than me but I think:

@ = tweeting at someone. Meaning it shows up on their feed.

# = something anyone can throw at the end and then tweets can be looked up by that tag. It doesn't reference back to any specific account.

if you start the tweet with @username, it's considered a reply and would only be viewable by people who follow both the bandtoband account and the band in question. if you start the tweet with something else and then include the @username later in the tweet, it's treated as a mention and will show to anyone who follows the bandtoband account and will show in search results for @username.

So, does it make sense to compose the Twitter posts to make use of the '@' so that it is seen by both the B2B followers as well as the band? Something like:

We've added @springsteen "Born In The USA" (1984) to the family tree. <link>

Would that give the band a chance to retweet the post? Would a retweet allow all of the band's followers an opportunity to read the post as well? I think that would be the best possible outcome.


Kevin

that sounds perfect.

a retweet would indeed allow the band's followers to see it.

You could make it:

We've added @springsteen's "Born In The USA"...

with the "'s", since the apostrophe (like other punctuation) won't get included in the Twitter handle.

This is great, thanks for all the insights. I'll start plugging it all in. Note that we do not need to go crazy trying to hunt down bands' handles, we only need those that are going to be added live at the moment.

If at some point we build up a huge number of handles, maybe we can embed the a band's feed into their band page. Might be fun.


Kevin

Is there a good reason to start "following" any of the bands that we have the handle for and post a new addition? Does it allow us to see or interact with the band in a way we otherwise wouldn't be able?


Kevin

The only real effect it would have is to encourage whoever is managing the band's Twitter account to follow B2B back. And that sort of reciprocal following can eventually encourage others to follow B2B, and so on.

By the way, I noticed the tweets are reporting the release years wrong -- they're off by a year.

I keep forgetting about dates like 1982-00-00 which the code recognized as 1981. I've fixed that. I'm also going to set up to follow any band that for which we have the authorized Twitter account.


Kevin