Introducing TriviBot

Many years ago, I used to be a regular in the #quiz chat room on DALnet. That's on IRC, for you whippersnappers who don't know what DALnet is. If you don't know what IRC is ... then get off our interland, youngster.

The #quiz channel was great fun. A bot, powered by MoxQuizz, would ask a question. First to get the answer right got a point. First to 30 won the game. Hours flew by and were forever lost.

I was looking for a small project to while away a morning and wanted to play with Twitter's API, so decided to write a basic quizbot for Twitter along similar lines to MoxQuizz. After a couple of hours behind the keyboard, I am pleased to be able to introduce you to @TriviBot.

The idea is pretty simple - answer a question first to get a point. First to 10 (at the moment) wins the game. Leaderboards and all-time high score tables will be put up shortly.

In all honesty, I have no idea how well or badly this kind of idea will translate to Twitter. Twitter is, after all, not a chat room network like IRC. However, I've enjoyed writing the thing and testing it has been good fun.

18 January 2009