Recently I've done some fooling around with the Twitter API. The first incarnation of that has morphed into the quasi-beta @HouseWatch Real Estate Twitter Bot.

There are basically two types of useful Twitter bots: those that periodically tweet information and those that are more interactive. @HouseWatch is of the interactive kind, although it does send out a periodic tweet with LendingTree prime mortgage rates, RealEstate.com contact information, and a random RealEstate.com featured home (about every 3 hours for that last one). Its primary function, though, is to respond to certain requests with useful information.

What kind of requests, you ask? Using the bot you have access via Twitter to most of the statistical city information we make available – things like crime stats, weather information, transportation statistics, etc.; It offers access (currently) to three different kinds of mortgage calculators: amortization, home equity, and a fixed-rate loan calculator; And finally it offers the ability to get real-time home values and home prices for individual addresses. All of the commands return a suitable snippet of information (suitable for 140 characters, that is) and a link to the full web page of statistical or home value data.

Now, you might be thinking, "Ok, this is a neat novelty item, and you folks at RealEstate.com are oh-so-very-cool. But what the heck practical use is it?" Well that's where you come in – we want you to guide us in making it useful!

For example, since Twitter can be hooked into SMS, an agent might have easy access to data – home values or neighborhood/city statistical data – while out in the field; it could just be a voyeuristic little toy for consumers to "ask" questions, etc. In addition, since it's an in-house effort, we can modify it to our – and more importantly, your – hearts' content.

Really, the sky's the limit for something like this. I'd rather have the wildest suggestions in the world that end up maybe being too impractical to pull off completely than to have no ideas at all. This can be your bot, and you can have a direct affect over what it does.

Follow @HouseWatch on Twitter and play around with the bot. Send a DM with "commands" to get a current list of available commands and try them out. Then come back and tell us what you think:

• What should it be doing that it's not?
• What should it stop doing that it is?
• What should it be doing differently to make it better?
• What practical uses can you see for it?

In a future post I'll give comprehensive instructions for each commands' use, with example tweets and responses. Meanwhile…have fun!