Success story
Flocknet
Connect with your network on Twitter
Here's the tl;dr
Here’s how Aaron Ng—developer and creator— was able to use Twitter’s API to build Flocknet, a search engine for your Twitter network. People are using Flocknet to expand their networks, recruit talent, and source investment leads. Initially built for his own personal use, Flocknet is now helping people manage millions of contacts on Twitter.
Endpoints
Challenge
When Aaron Ng attended a design conference in New York, he wanted to connect and meet with others in his industry. But that’s when he realized connecting, even with his own designer friends on Twitter, was more challenging than he thought. Much of his community was on Twitter, especially his friends in the industry. Was there no way for him to see which of his friends would be in town? How could he catch up with industry connections, without knowing who would be around?
Aaron immediately saw this challenge as an opportunity. And as a result of his entrepreneurial spirit, Flocknet was born.
Solution
In just one weekend, Aaron was able to build a product for searching, sorting, and keeping up with people, friends, and other professionals in his Twitter network, even without seeing their Tweets. He chose to use Twitter’s API for this project, “knowing there’s someone I can ask questions to, and [knowing the Twitter] team cares, makes it a much nicer experience.” Adding, “much of the community that motivated me to keep building was on Twitter—which is why it’s become such an important place to me, and why I wanted to make some tooling to enhance my usage of it.”
With a mix of his own creativity, drive, and experience, Flocknet came to life—a search engine and contact management tool for finding people in your Twitter network. Utilizing Twitter’s follows endpoints and Python, Flocknet allows users to search through their followers by job, workplace, location, and numerous other attributes.
While initially meant for his own personal use, Flocknet generated so much public interest, that he knew it was meant to be shared. As such, he quickly shifted his efforts to scale up Flocknet to be what it is today.
Impact
In just a few short months, Flocknet manages millions of contacts on behalf of its users. Tech professionals have found it especially useful, using it for everything from recruiting to investing, and anything in between. In fact, even Aaron has hired people through Flocknet!
But Aaron’s not done, just yet. By focusing on the incoming feature requests, Aaron continuously looks for ways to build out the product.
Ultimately, Aaron found a way to turn Twitter into a meta-platform to enhance the experience of anyone whose community primarily exists on Twitter. He says, “I just make a lot of stuff. And I love making things that I find useful and other people find useful”. And that’s exactly what he did.
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