I OFTEN GET INTERESTING direct messages from Twitter when people I follow start doing the same thing. The information trickles in at regular intervals when Europe is awake, mirroring the demographic of those I follow.
When I signed up for the @MagicRecs service, fewer than 5000 people were following the account. It looks like the service has been running since April 2013. It took Twitter two days to start sending me direct messages because during the August silly season in Ireland, there's little to focus minds on anything more conversational than sunshine. I imagine if Twitter formally announced that people could get real-time social graph information, the marketing community would arrive in droves.
It's a little creepy (but useful) to discover a pack of my followers have suddenly started following the same account. It's like seeing a swarm in motion.
I'm curious to see if @MagicRecs can be used to complement event management by republishing check-ins pushed to Twitter from Foursquare or if it limits its messaging to triggers that come directly from the Twitter client.
The description of the @MagicRecs says it will recommend content and I'm getting links that more than six of my connections share during the same four hour period. I'm also interested in seeing the most commonly shared photos and the most popular Vine videos in real time too.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches social media on the creative multimedia degree programme in the Limerick School of Art & Design.]