Jolie,

I definitely learned something about Twitter today.  I had known for a
while that only a limited timeline of tweets was indexed for search (most
recent week or so), but I was not aware that some tweets or hastags may be
excluded wholesale.  I read this
article<http://eventamplifier.com/2011/03/16/a-tale-of-two-twitter-accounts/>for
further confirmation of your issue, as well as the Twitter support
document <https://support.twitter.com/articles/66018> on it.  It seems if
you include a URL Twitter is even less likely to include your tweets in
search; while this is anecdotally reported by users, it makes sense, as
Twitter spiders every link and relies on their link shortening service
completely.

I followed your research on the issue and looked at the streaming API as
well.  Unfortunately the streaming library is intended only for new
(incoming) tweets; i.e., you can't load tweets from prior to the time your
began the request to Twitter, from what I can tell.  As for Apache, as a
side note, Apache is both a foundation and a product.  Apache as a software
product is a webserver.  The documentation refers to the Apache HttpClient,
written in Java and somewhat tricky to implement.  I looked for a simple
web-based streaming client; there are a few but they only served to confirm
the "incoming only" notion.

I wish I had found otherwise searching on this issue; I thought Twitter
would be a bit more robust here.  Only think I can think is that some
service that indexes tweets externally, like Faavorite, would help, but
their search wouldn't work correctly when I tried your hashtag, which is a
bad sign...

You may have to fall back on creating a class Twitter account, or something
along those lines.

Best of luck,
Ben


On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Jolie Kennedy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> I'm new to the list. I have a question that is not specifically about CSS
> as the list description indicates, but a friend thought that someone might
> be able to help me with this question...
>
> I'm using twitter for a class assignment in which students use the hashtag
> #CI312 (this is for class CI2312/4312 Sex, Drugs, & the Internet) when they
> find information on the Internet related to class topics.
>
> Unfortunately the hashtag is not indexed so when I search on twitter for
> #CI312, I get no results.
>
> I have created a list for the class:
> https://twitter.com/JolieKennedy/sex-drugs-the-internet
> However, I would like to be able to search for the hashtag #CI312
>
> I did a little research. I think I need an http client like apache. Here
> is the stream that I would like to access from the twitter "firehose."
>
> https://stream.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/filter.json?track=CI312
>
> Here are some of the links with some information.
>
> https://dev.twitter.com/docs/faq#8650
> https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/parameters#track
> https://dev.twitter.com/docs
> https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-libraries
>
> I have never used an http client or twitter library. Anyone know about
> this?
> Thanks!
> Jolie
>
> --
>
> *Jolie Kennedy*
> Learning Technologies
> University of Minnesota
> [log in to unmask]
> 619.987.5654
> @joliekennedy
> http://www.joliekennedy.com
>