====== A different sort of Twitter bot ======

[[http://recom.me/|{{ http://recom.me/static/recomme-logo-med.png|recom.me}}]]
I've long held a strong fascination for Twitter in conjunction with LOLCODE. Twitter was pretty much the first vector for people to hear about LOLCODE on its first day, before Reddit and Digg struck. I also thought that LOLCODE would make a good language for a bot running on Twitter: if people could access it via SMS, and it looks close to TXT SPEEK anyway, it could be a compelling combination. That never materialized, but the idea stuck around.

My latest project has been a music recommendation agent for Twitter. Yes, Twitter bots are so 2007, but I'd like to think that [[http://recom.me/|recom.me]] brings something new to the table by giving user queries some persistence. Not only does the bot react on Twitter, but it creates a permanent URL on its own website.

If you like music and have some tolerance for Twitter, please check the user [[http://twitter.com/recomme|@recomme]] out, and send it a band name or solo artist. It should respond within a couple minutes with a list of other, similar musicians worth checking out. Respond again with "more" (or, if you prefer, "MOAR"), it'll send a few more artists to consider. I designed it to be easy to use via SMS at, say, the record store.

If you're not on Twitter, you can still explore a [[http://recom.me/0AABK|sample query]], or read more at the [[http://recom.me/about|about page]].

This is just an early preview version of the site. Thanks to the awesome guys at [[http://the.echonest.com/|The Echo Nest]], whose APIs are behind the uncanny recommendations, recomme should soon be able to learn about your tastes and customize its recommendations for you.

P.S.: We're in the final hours of the LOLCODE [[news:Back-to-School]] sale. I have no idea when Spreadshirt will offer such a good discount again.