working on something similar to that now on a project.  I think you need to use the streaming API to do it effectively.  What are you using now?  Search, Rest, or Streaming?

Some projects that I have found useful:

http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/7-days-of-source-day-1-goodmorning       //if you plan on using the search api
http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/updated-quick-tutorial-processing-twitter      //new OAuth stuff
https://forum.processing.org/topic/twitter-streaming      //if you plan on using streaming

I dont know if you are more advanced that those links that I posted, but they helped me get started with the library.  That and the Twitter4j javadocs and a friend who actually knows what he is doing with java.

good luck.

Hi,

thanks for the links, they're pretty helpful!