NashTransit

Tweeeet: Big Changes Coming to NashTransit

All right, everyone - big news on the Twitter front. @NashTransit is changing soon, in a big way. It will all start in one week, on Monday, January 31.

Some of you may be familiar with the Twitter feed @nashtraffic. It's a pretty cool service - follow it, and you'll get reports on traffic and driving conditions from other users all over the city. When you tweet a message that starts with '@nashtraffic', it gets repeated automatically to everyone else who follows @nashtraffic. The result: live, real-time traffic updates from users.

That's what's about to happen to @NashTransit. Except, naturally, it will be for MTA bus and Music City Star updates, provided by transit riders like you.

@nashtraffic and the new @NashTransit are powered by the Twitfinite bot, automation software which is developed right here in Nashville. You can read more about it at the Twitfinite site, but here's a quick rundown:

Say you're on the #7 Hillsboro bus, and it's stuck in traffic. You might tweet:

@nashtransit 7 Hillsboro inbound stuck in traffic near Green Hills Mall

Your message will instantly get reposted to everyone following @nashtransit. Easy as that. Follow @nashtransit and you'll get live updates posted from other MTA riders. Take a peek at @nashtraffic to get a sense of the kinds of messages that people post.

Note, if you put "@nashtransit" anywhere other than the start of your tweet, it will not get reposted.

If you're following @nashtransit and @nashtransit is following you, you can also send a Direct Message, without having to add '@nashtransit' to the start.

This is surely going to start slowly. We need enough followers reporting to make @nashtransit a useful source of information. So please help spread the word to your Nashville transit-riding friends. The more people participate, the better it gets. (And by the way, spammers and other assorted jerks misusing the system or causing trouble will be blocked at our discretion. Fair notice.)

Some of you already following @NashTransit aren't going to be interested in this, especially those of you not actually living in Nashville. I'm sure eventually there will be some unfollows, and I totally understand that. I'm opening up another Twitter account @NashTransitTalk if you want to keep up with my (very, very) occasional musings on mass transit in Middle Tennessee. Follow that account without fear of being overrun with status updates.