On Sun, 9 Jan 2011 14:29:12 -0800 (PST), Brian Maso
<br...@blumenfeld-maso.com> wrote:
What I did is opened up three separate normal browser tabs in
Firefox,
each using the Twitter search web interface to search for three
different hashtags ("#ces", "ces11", and "nfl" -- examples of three
tags that should have decent ongoing traffic).
At the same time I have an application capturing tweets from the same
three hashtags using the streaming API ("filter.json?
q=#ces,#ces11,#nfl", with appropriate URL encoding).
Irregardless of the amount of time, the streaming application
captured
about 25% fewer tweets. Detailed analysis of the tweet IDs captured
by
the browsers vs. those captured by the standalone application
retrieving tweets via the streaming API verified that there were
tweets delivered through the browsers that did not appear through the
streaming API. There were no tweets delivered through the streaming
API that did not also appear in the set of tweets delivewred through
the browsers.
I would love it if anyone else would try a similar experiment and
report back results. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or maybe this
is
an anomaly, or maybe the streaming API just doesn't capture as much
--
impossible for me to say.
I note that the streaming API documentation doesn't claim an intent
to
match accuracy with the search API (nor vice versa). At this point
I'm
thinking to get the greatest accuracy I should be collecting tweets
from *both* APIs.
Brian Maso
Did you just recently start running these tests? Specifically, did you
run any tests / notice discrepancies *before* Twitter threw the switches
for the Gnip partnership? This might be an unintended consequence of the
"data plumbing" activities associated with Gnip.
By the way, I've seen tweets returned by search that *don't* appear to
match the search terms! Have you verified that all the tweets Search is
giving you do in fact match?
--
http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul
Erdős
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