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About LaughTrack

LaughTrack provides a window into the buzz on Twitter about the Melbourne International Comedy Festival—making it easy to see what shows people are raving about.

Tweets and Scores

The tweets collected are reviews of shows, by people who have gone to the shows (not general recommendations by friends, nor pre-show excitement). Retweets are ignored. LaughTrack monitors the #micf hashtag—so if you want your reviews to appear here, make sure you include that in your tweet!

The scores for each show are calculated using a mathematical formula factoring in both the number of tweets about a show, and how many of those are positive. This means that a show with just a single tweet doesn't sit on top of the list.

The People Behind It

LaughTrack was created by Pat Allan—initially for the 2010 Festival - and has received much appreciated design and development support from some wonderfully talented friends: Ben Webster, Nathan Sampimon, Andrew France, Dan Cheail, Mark Brown and Elle Meredith. The name was provided via the inspired mind of Andy Gelme.

If you need to get in touch, just send a tweet or email to Pat.

The Site

LaughTrack was inspired by a few similar websites built for the Edinburgh Fringe—in particular, EdTwinge.

LaughTrack has no commercial angle—we don't want your money—and so the code is available online, for anyone to read and learn from, and perhaps contribute to, should you be so inclined.

All that said, all original content and code for LaughTrack is copyright © 2010-2012 by Pat Allan and contributors where appropriate. The tweets displayed are property of their authors, and the show information is obtained from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival website.