twitterwalk.py

"""
walk through related tags on twitter.

start it with something like python twitterwalk.py sxsw
"""

import sys, re
from twitter import Twitter

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    initial_tag = sys.argv[1]
else:
    initial_tag = 'python'

t = Twitter(domain='search.twitter.com')

tags = ['#' + initial_tag]
seen_tags = set()

for tag in tags:
    if not tag in seen_tags:
        print "%d %s %d" % (len(seen_tags), tag, len(tags))
        seen_tags.add(tag)
        new_tags = set()
        for msg in (tweet['text'] for tweet in t.search(q=tag)['results']):
            new_tags.update(set([m.lower() for m in re.findall('#\w+', msg)]))
        print "   " + ' '.join(new_tags)
        tags += list(new_tags)