Spotd News Service
I spend a lot of time walking around Chicago and see interesting things happen all the time - people getting arrested, traffic accidents, buildings on fire,
protests, street festivals, train derailments and other news-worthy things that people want to know about as soon as they happen. I tweet about them,
but I wanted to create something to give people a common source of communication throughout their city to stay on top of things that are happening right now
without having to wait for major media outlets to cover them or without searching through the endless dribble of Twitter looking for a specific hash tag.
That’s where the Spotd news service comes in, it is an aggregated, user-submitted news feed for interesting things going on - so far, I created accounts
for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York to get things started; with more to come and any user can create their own Spotd news service for their own city.
How it Works
It works just the same as the generic bot service does. People tweet a reply or Twitpic to the @spotd account for the city(Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco,etc...) when they witness
something happening on in their city. Twitter users who are following that account will have access to all of these updates by either looking the Spotd
Twitter page or by enabling updates via text message.
Enabled Accounts
Here are some Twitter accounts that are enabled to utilize the @spotd technology and examples on how to use them:
@tamaletracker Claudio at the Happy Village!! Queso love.
@spotdla Lindsay Lohan just crashed her car on Hollywood Blvd. woo hoo!
@spotdnyc Bulding fire at 8th Ave @ W 41 St - Port Authority Bus Terminal
@spotdchicago Red line derailed southbound at Fullerton
@spotdsf Just saw a bank robbery on Market Street