UPDATE: As of Feb 2017, sync to lists works with starred results.

ScoutZen now lets you sync your scout results to Twitter lists. If you are on a paid plan, sign in to ScoutZen and set it up now. If you are on the Free plan, don’t worry. Just go to your Account settings and change plans to try out sync features absolutely FREE for 14 days.

Read on for more details.

Scouts run continually gathering results matching your criteria. These results can always be browsed from within ScoutZen. However, by syncing them to Twitter you can see the list timeline in your favorite Twitter client. Here is how the Sync setup looks like if you go to the Settings tab for your selected Scout.

Sync Setup

  • Provide the Twitter list name to sync to
  • Select the sync criteria, including the maximum number of results
  • Choose if you want the Twitter list to be public or private
  • Check “Enable Sync” to get the sync running

Twitter List Creation

If the Twitter list with the name you provide does not exist, ScoutZen will create it with the appropriate public or private setting you specify. If the list already exists, ScoutZen will keep it in sync based on the sync conditions you specify.

IMPORTANT! The sync is one-way only. The Twitter list is kept in sync with the Scout results. Any items or changes to the Twitter list may not be retained unless they are part of the Scout results and meet the sync conditions.

Sync Selection

Twitter lists can have no more than 5000 members. However, it is very easy to have scouts gathering tens of thousands of results. For example, when a Scout is tracking followers of some account, or monitoring a very popular hashtag. Sync conditions help you get the best results while staying under the limit of Twitter list members.

Simply specify the maximum number (upto 5000) sorted by descending number of:

  • Followers
  • Friends
  • List memberships
  • Tweets
  • Recent Activity

Scout results will be sorted to gather the appropriate candidates for syncing with the Twitter list.

FAQ & Technical Details

  1. Every Scout can sync to its own Twitter list. As long as you are on the paid plan (or trialing it).
  2. Each Scout can sync to just own Twitter list at a time. You can always change the Twitter list it syncs to.
  3. The sync is subject to Twitter API rate limits, including unpublished throttling.
  4. A large initial sync might take several days to sync up. Incremental changes should be kept in sync on a daily basis.

So try it out, and let us know if any questions or feedback.

As you can imagine, in addition to accomodating Twitter list membership limits, sync selection can efficiently enable other use cases for your marketing and outreach. We will be detailing some of these soon. So stay posted on more news and tips from ScoutZen.