Check out the filter URL on the streaming API. It will return up to N tweets a minute, where N is the amount you'd get from a sampled stream. However it only returns tweets that match track keywords. Provided the number of filtered tweets is never above the sampled amount, you won't get limited.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Using gardenhose you're throttled at 100 tweets a minute (not the real number). You track the keyword "twitter". During the first minute there are 50 matches. You get all 50. During the second minute there are 150 tweets about twitter. You'll get 100 tweets, and a limit message saying there were 50 more you missed due to throttling. Does this make sense? ---Mark http://twitter.com/mccv On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Ross Bates <rba...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm reading the streaming API documentation and have a question about > track keywords. A set of keywords can be used to filter the gardenhose > but it doesn't actually increase your chance of getting tweets that > would not have been included in the unfiltered stream. The gardenhose > is a sample of the firehose and returns the same results to all > clients - correct? > > If this is the case then for applications that need all data for > specific keywords I would think the search API remains the better > option? For example, if I needed all tweets that contained the words > foo OR bar the gardenhose can't guarantee I will get 100%. > > What's confusing me is the email which went out the other day about > the streaming API. First the statement about polling for keywords: > > "If your application polls for keywords, mentions, is whitelisted on > the > Search API, or makes more than perhaps 10 queries per minute, you > should > begin your migration to Streaming. Desktop clients should postpone a > migration to Streaming." > > Then later in the email: > > "Complete corpus search: Search is focused on result set quality and > there are no guarantees to return all matching tweets. Complete > results > are only available on the Streaming API. Search results are > increasingly > filtered and reordered for relevance." > > This second statement differs from the streaming API documentation > which says that the streaming API is sampled. > > Does the rollout of the streaming API to the general public mean that > results are no longer sampled? > > -Ross >
