As most Nintendo Wii owners know by now, Mario Kart for Wii shipped last week. I put together yet another friend code database to track and share codes, but this one is unique because it builds on Twitter. Just follow “@wii”:twitter.com/wii and send your friend code in a reply. No registration, no data entry. All your friends on Twitter who also use the system will automatically be linked, so you can quickly get a view of which friend codes to add. It’s also a great way to discover new Twitter users.
I’m pretty happy with how the implementation has worked out. It’s build on essentially three background scripts:
- Parsing replies every minute looking for the friend code pattern (1234-1234-1234 for game codes, with dashes or spaces).
Taking queued users and pulling everyone they are following into the database.
Generating and caching the RSS feed for recently tweeted friend codes.
The system currently only pulls the first 300 followers, but it's running smoothly enough that I will bump that up to 500 this week. Over 150 people are currently using it, and the database has about 10,000 records to keep track of friends. I feel like it's architected well enough to grow significantly from here, so I may do some casual promotion of the service this week.
If you own a Wii and use Twitter, “give it a try”:wiitransfer.com/codes/. If you have any questions or feature requests, please send me an email or reply on Twitter. Enjoy!
