{"id":53539,"date":"2012-06-26T12:33:17","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T10:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=53539"},"modified":"2012-06-26T12:54:41","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T10:54:41","slug":"man-builds-twitter-bot-users-actually-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/53539-man-builds-twitter-bot-users-actually-like.html","title":{"rendered":"Man builds Twitter bot users actually like"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man set up a bot account on Twitter<\/a>, in an attempt to perform an experiment to see if an automated program could simulate itself into real networks and people.<\/p>\n

Greg Marra, the man behind the experiment and a Google+ product manager, created the user @Trackgirl, which aimed to infiltrate a group of runners. The bot executed running-themed keywords and phrases, and posted them as its own.<\/p>\n

@Trackbot would post about the agony and ecstacy of long-distance running, and \u201cpeople were sympathizing with a Python script,\u201d says Marra, as other users thought the copy\/paste messages were real, and commented on and retweeted the posts.<\/p>\n

Marra and the others who worked on his project thought his Twitter bots might fool a few people into adding them to their Twitter network, but they thought that would be the end of it. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect that people would interact with these bots. That\u2019s not something we thought of at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Wired<\/a><\/h5>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

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Microsoft Surface fail goes viral<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Kony 2012 threatens lawsuit for online parody<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Apple sued over 4G claims<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fake Twitter account generates real-life human interaction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340900,"featured_media":52047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[12849,12853,405,12851],"class_list":["post-53539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-greg-marra","tag-trackgirl","tag-twitter","tag-twitter-bot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340900"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53547,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53539\/revisions\/53547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}