Over 4,500 tweets later, the TTCUpdates Twitter account is no more.

It may be gone, but it’s not forgotten. Nearly a month after Brian Gilham, the developer of TTCUpdates, shutdown the account and site, people are still using the #ttcu hashtag when they run into trouble on the TTC.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish. TTCupdates is now officially shut down,” Gilham tweeted just before pulling the switch on the site at midnight on Dec. 16.

Gilham posted a good-bye note on his website, and says the code for TTCUpdates is free for the taking — but not the TTCUpdates name, domain name or Twitter account.

“A few people got in touch right away,” Gilham said, but they ultimately wanted his domain. He also wants to make sure whoever takes the code uses it appropriately.

“It’s tough, too, because I feel there’s a certain amount of respect behind TTCUpdates.”

TTCUpdates worked like this: If you ran into problems on the TTC and tweeted about it with #ttcu in the tweet, then the TTCUpdates account would tweet out your tweet to its nearly 3,000 followers.

The site had humble beginnings. Gilham, who works as a web developer in his day job, began the account in 2008 back when the “Toronto Twitter community was much different.”

“It started out as a way to experiment posting things to Twitter automatically,” Gilham said. “The TTC seemed like a good way to do it.”

Gilham also felt at the time the TTC was not doing enough to get information about troubles on the transit system out to riders. However, Gilham said the TTC has improved “leaps and bounds” in the last couple of years in this regard. So much so that Gilham decided to shut down TTCUpdates.

Gilham wrote an application which pulled in an RSS feed from the TTC’s website about disruptions. Soon the account was pulling in tweets from anyone which included the hashtag #ttcu.

“It didn’t surprise me that people wanted to contribute to it, it was the outside attention that surprised me,” Gilham explained, adding he was soon doing media interviews on the GO train ride home to Whitby after work.

Gilham credits part of the success of TTCUpdates to the fact that Torontonians are so connected to their transit system.

“I certainly feel there is a connection to transit in Toronto unlike any other city I’ve ever been in,” he said.

It’s true. Love it or hate it, Torontonians build blogs, online route planners and mobile apps in the hopes of making their transit system better.

“People in Toronto are incredibly passionate about transit and the TTC,” said TTC director of corporate communications Brad Ross

Gilham said he never heard a negative word from the TTC about his Twitter feed.

“I’ve talked to Brad Ross and (former TTC chair) Adam Giambrone, and they were very supportive about it.”

“It’s safe to say the work of people like Brian is invaluable,” Ross said, adding it would be inappropriate for the TTC to shutdown Twitter feeds, websites or applications like TTCUpdates.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Ross said the TTC often will look at applications done by smaller developers, like Gilham, to see if something similar can be used by the TTC.

Gilham also points to Toronto’s web development community who are constantly creating new applications. As an example, Gilham points to Adam Schwabe who created the iPhone app Rocket Radar, which uses GPS information to find a user’s location then tells them when the next streetcar is arriving.

As for the future of TTCUpdates? Gilham hopes a developer who has a bit more time to dedicate to the site than he did and that it will be reborn and carry on somehow.

Read more about: