Steve, It sounds like you should consider the /follow method in the streaming API. You'll get similar results with no latency or rate limits. If you need to follow more users, apply for the /shadow method. If you also want mentions, you can use /track.
-John Kalucki http://twitter.com/jkalucki Services, Inc. On Aug 4, 9:50 am, steve <[email protected]> wrote: > There are a lot of messages and details around saying that the REST > API is 150 per hour, with whitelisting up to 20k per hour. The Search > API is "more than" the 150, but no specifics. > > >> Note that the Search API is not limited by the same 150 requests per hour > >> limit as the REST API. > >> The number is quite a bit higher and we feel it is both liberal and > >> sufficient for most applications. > > My question is this, I have just soft launchedwww.twitparade.co.uk, > and although the site is in early days, a lot of work is in the > scheduler that grabs, stores and publishes individual tweets. > > The way I am doing it is as follows: > > 1. Load a list of people in a specific time slice to check > 2. Loop through each person on list, pausing for 5 seconds after each > person (except the last) > 3. Pause for 20 seconds at the end of the list > 4. Pick up the next time slice and start again > > The time slicing allows me to prioritise the people how have tweeted > more recently, by checking them more frequently. > > With the pauses I am currently using, assuming each search is instant, > then in any 1 minute, I am carrying out a maximum of 12 searches, > equating to 720 an hour. If the minute spans a list change, then there > is a 20 second pause, so I would only carry out 8 searches, equating > to 480 an hour. This can mean that it takes 20 minutes for some Tweets > to be picked up, if that person hasn't tweeted for a while (as I check > them less often) - I would like to improve that. > > The gatherer is desktop application, so doesn't have a referrer, but I > have set the User-Agent to list my app name and the URL of the final > site that the data is gathered for, so hopefully Twitter can ID my app > (aside: How can we tell that our User-Agent makes it through?). I am > also on a fixed IP address, so should be identifiable to the back-end > systems at Twitter's end. > > So how aggressive with cutting my pauses can I be? The Search API > numbers are not publicized so I have no idea if I'm knocking on the > limits, or whether I can with much lower pauses. > > If I cut step 2 down to 1 and step 3 to 5 seconds, then my max rate > would be 60 per minute = 3600 per hour, or 2700 per hour. Is this > within the unknown limits? > > If someone from Twitter could confirm/deny that my use of caching, > user-agent and shorter pauses all works together, I'd appreciate it. > > Thanks, > > Steve > -- > Quick Web Ltd > UK
