Peanut Gallery: A script that takes a start time and an end time and generates a subtitle file for your twitter stream (or a given hash tag), so you can watch a show or other live event with (time-shifted) real-time twitter commentary.
I woke up this morning to a twitter stream full of amazing Oscar commentary. For example, from the ever-reliable Zodiac Motherfucker:
@ZODIAC_MF GET MRS POTATO HEAD THE FUCK OUT OF HERE
This is hilarious, but who is he talking about? Without context, I’m missing something. Actually, for most of my twitter stream last night, I don’t know what people are referring to. I’d say the same thing happened for anyone who wasn’t watching the Sony PlayStation announcement. For certain shows and events, a snarky running commentary makes that show infinitely more entertaining.
I’ll probably watch the Oscars tonight — time-shifting a live event — and I’d love to be able to time-shift my twitter stream as well. I think a subtitle track for my media file would be the best way of doing this.
Unfortunately, I think this is the kind of thing Anil Dash was referring to in his essay The Web We Lost: I don’t think Twitter’s API allows this kind of usage. Shame.