4

It would be great if there was a way that we could associate our accounts with Twitter and when viewing questions and answers, could "tweet" it automagically. I know that there have been times that my question was not very straight forward and someone from twitterville actually came in and answered it for me...

This would essentially be a one way form of communication, maybe a button in each post that would allow you to tweet the post's link with a brief text input (obviously keeping the entire post to under 140 characters)

EDIT
you can argue that SO is not a social networking site, but that does not imply that there is no value or utility to be had there by some form of integration.

8
  • Lol: I can see them suddenly limiting new question titles to 140 characters to be 'twitter compatible' :) Jul 9, 2009 at 15:40
  • @Joel - that would make my day! Sometimes the titles go on and on and on....
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:44
  • facepalm @ yet another title/tag confused title.
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:50
  • 2
    keep facepalming yourself rich...
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:59
  • 1
    While SO is not social - you can get a lot more people to look at yuor question when you tweet it - isnt that the point is to get as many good answers as possible so you can fix a problem ?
    – braindice
    Jan 20, 2010 at 9:21
  • @codemypantsoff that is exactly what I'm getting at... We don't need to turn SO into a social networking site. We have enough of those darn things already. But, being able to quickly throw the links out to other sites can only help SO...
    – RSolberg
    Jan 20, 2010 at 16:37
  • Question on SO for developing such a script: stackoverflow.com/questions/311383/…
    – Pollyanna
    Mar 19, 2010 at 13:06
  • See also: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63684/… Sep 23, 2014 at 19:13

4 Answers 4

3

Possibly useful to some, but (IMHO) overly specific. What if i use Facebook, or LinkedIn, or a bit of custom PHP that builds a list into the sidebar of my cat blog - SO isn't gonna be able to build in equivalent features for everyone...

So, I'd rather see two enhancements that, combined, could accomplish the same thing, while opening the door to easy integration with other sites:

  1. A feed for Favorites. Click the star next to a question, see it show up in your personal favorites feed.
  2. A Twitter that allows unlimited characters in a single "tweet", as well as proper formatting and such.

With those two in place, you can use a small script to direct your Favorites feed into your Twitter account. Now whenever you "Favorite" something, you'd automatically "Tweet" it as well!

5

Please no. Stack Overflow is not a social networking site and it shouldn't be integrated with one.

If you insist on spamming your every Stack Overflow interaction to a social network site, just copy and paste the link please.

Since this is so specific, why not just add this to a greasemonkey script for (very) limited number of people who might make use of this?

5
  • Just because it is not one is not justification for why its utility could not be improved by using one...
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:53
  • 2
    @RSolberg: No utility would be improved by cluttering the site with nonsense. People will then request digg links, reddit, etc. No thanks.
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:54
  • @Rich - can you provide any form of reasonable justification for not wanting things like DIGG?
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:56
  • @Rsolberg: Yes. The site works well enough on its own, doesn't need more clutter, and copy and paste work.
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:58
  • 3
    I agree with Rich. If you want to Tweet, Digg, Reddit, IM, etc. your post on SO simply copy a link to your question / answer and post it. I don't think having this ability adds anything to the SO experience and has a good chance of cluttering a very clean UI.
    – ahsteele
    Jul 9, 2009 at 16:03
2

I like this proposal, but I don't think it goes far enough. For those of us who don't tweet, it should be able to send emails to a list of contacts. Maybe it should print out a letter and mail it to Donald Knuth, just in case he knows the answer. Actually, is there a way the server could make my computer get up, walk down the hall, and ask someone else? Because I'm just too lazy to do it myself.

6
  • There is another request for sending emails... As the title and tags show, this is purely about tweeting it...
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:50
  • Email.... meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3919/…
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:51
  • 2
    Wow. Talk about 'just not getting it'...
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:51
  • @RSolberg: Did you just not read this answer? Or did you not get it?
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:55
  • @Rich - No I get it... I read his post loud and clear... You see, on any given day I can choose whether or not to be a "fill in the blank" (ass) and today I'm choosing the high road. You may not know much about that route nor would Pesto, but if responses were actually constructive, things might be better on these sites...
    – RSolberg
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:58
  • 1
    @RSolberg: I tend to think his post is precisely what this question needed honestly.
    – GEOCHET
    Jul 9, 2009 at 15:59
2

I kinda like this idea. You could have a 'Also publish my question to....(various well known places)' .

It doesn't change SO into a social networking site, all it's doing is pushing your question out to other places where folks may not have heard about SO.

I think this also benefits SO because you expose SO to a wider audience who may not have heard about it.

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