Filtering Twitterby keywords or user names is not an easy task to accomplish. Twitter does not have a built in way to filter out potentially unwanted Tweets from its users. Because of the lack of a filter, Twitter can be a risk to have placed for public viewing.
Because Twitter can create an exciting “back channel” of information for an event by incorporating Twitter Hash-Tags, many (including myself) , desire to display a Twitter Feed on a wall or with a portable screen by utilizing a LCD projector. The biggest issue stopping people from doing this is the threat of something seriously inappropriate appearing in the Twitter Stream by a user (like profanity or worse). Because of this, you simply don’t see this type of interactive experience being utilized by organizations or in many educational settings.
I’ve spent an awful long time trying various types of RSS and Atom Feed Alchemy to accomplish some type of working Twitter Filter. Some of my first attempts at “sanitizing” a Twitter Feed included using Yahoo Pipes, Feed Rinse, and Feed Burner (among a host of other RSS/Atom Tool). These attempts resulted in usable solutions, but they were not very practical, nor as visually appealing as I would have liked them to be.
I finally was able to discover a simple way to accomplish this type of Twitter Feed Filtering by using a program called Mixero. To date, I have not found a simpler way to perform an easier or more visually appealing Twitter Filter than that which Mixero is able to provide. I’ve created a YouTube screencast/audio tutorial of how to accomplish this and placed it on YouTube for anyone to use. Mixero is a free Twitter and Facebook Social Aggregator. Please watch the YouTube video in this post for a detailed account of how to do this using Mixero.
YouTube Extra:Dr. Pisano discusses Filtering Twitter Feeds For Profanity and Specific Users:
Direct YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf84hw8xtJw
Mixero Direct Link: http://mixero.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pisanojm
