DEV Community

Cover image for Use Twitter to find developer friends near you
Cyris ⭐️ JavaScript
Cyris ⭐️ JavaScript

Posted on

Use Twitter to find developer friends near you

Being a developer can be tough, especially doing it all alone. That's why I always recommend surrounding yourself with like-minded 'Developer Friends' that support and motivate you.

Learn from each other, challenge each other, and work together to achieve the goals you set out. You'll not only learn about team dynamics but communication and collaboration. These are all important skills you'll need when working in a team as a developer.

So if you're looking to connect with like-minded individuals in your area then this trick is for you.

I'm intrigued, go on.

Twitter has a really cool feature that not many people know about. You can search for tweets using geolocation data.

Alt Twitter Geolocation Search

A lot of tweets are automatically tagged with geolocation data such a latitude, longitude, and radius (skip ahead if you want to disable this). Using Twitter's own search or API we can query for tweets using these fields:

// The breakdown
geocode:latitude,longitude,radius
// Actual data
geocode:-36.8484597,174.7633315,10km 
// Actual data with search terms included
geocode:40.7127753,-74.0059728,5mi "Coding" OR "Programming"

Let's give it a try

Here we are searching for anyone tweeting related developer terms within a 5-mile radius of Facebook's Headquarters in California.

Alt Twitter search for developers

Now make it even easier

You're not going to want to keep Googling the coordinates and building your custom search strings each and every time. So I built a quick tool that does it all for you.

Developer Friends will accept any address, location you can throw at it and it will automatically generate the coordinates and build your custom search query for you. Include the predefined search terms with the tickboxes or even add your own in the text box.

After hitting search you'll be taken to Twitter with your own custom search query and everyone listed should be within the location and radius you specified. Now go make some developer friends. 👍

...

I don't want to appear in these searches

No worries, you can disable geotagging on your tweets within Twitter's settings. You can read more about it here


I hope you'll be able to find, follow, and make plenty of developer friends. If you know any other cool tricks, let me know in the comments or on Twitter @sudo_overflow

Top comments (11)

Collapse
 
nialljoemaher profile image
Niall Maher

This is awesome! Really smart, thanks for sharing. 💜

Collapse
 
aaronmccollum profile image
Aaron McCollum

Thanks! Gonna go check this out right now.

Collapse
 
kyleprinsloo profile image
Kyle Prinsloo

I didn't even know this was possible :) thanks for these tips, Cyris!

Collapse
 
krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade • Edited

Cool well done Cyris

Collapse
 
natterstefan profile image
Stefan Natter 🇦🇹👨🏻‍💻

Thank for the insights, Cyris! 🦄

Collapse
 
waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker

This is such a cool tool! Sadly most of the Twitter activity in my area was political code, building development, or mine.

Collapse
 
chrisdixon161 profile image
Chris Dixon

Thanks Cyris!

Collapse
 
mtfoley profile image
Matthew Foley

Really cool, going to use this for sure!

Collapse
 
ayomi_002 profile image
Ayomi

Thanks Chris, this is really cool.

Collapse
 
mjcoder profile image
Mohammad Javed

That's awesome. 👏