Twitter via RSS: More Problems, More Solutions

I previously wrote about how the Twitter 1.1 API dropped support for Atom and RSS, making it a PITA to get feeds for Twitter timelines in a feed reader. (As an aside, I switched feed readers - again - a while back. I'm now using InoReader. I can't recall if I've mentioned that since I made the change.) Since that post, two of the solutions I came up with have run into problems. The Twitter RSS service is apparently gone: surfing to twitter-rss.com yields a page saying the domain name expired on February 6 of this year. I was also pulling some feeds from twss.55uk.net, which now produces a "service unavailable" error.

After a bit of surfing, I found a solution posted by Amit Agarwal (@labnol), titled "A Simple Way to Create RSS Feeds for Twitter". Simple is in the eye of the beholder, but it works, and there's a learning curve effect (creating the second, third, ... feed gets progressively faster). It uses a Google Script run under your account, which makes me nervous for a couple of reasons. First, it creates another failure point if Google decides to discontinue support for user scripts. (Remember the late, lamented Google Reader?) Second, the script has to be configured so that anyone can run it, but it runs under your account. The script looks pretty benign to me, and it's unlikely anyone else would stumble over the correct URL to run it, but on general principles I get a bit nervous being this permissive.

Anyway, the instructions are in Mr. Agarwal's post, and they are quite clear, so I shall not repeat them here. I've replaced four feeds so far, and things seem to be working ... for the moment ...

Thanks a Bunch, Twitter!

At the INFORMS 2012 panel session on social media, I suggested that people interested in dipping a toe into the waters use Google Reader to watch RSS feeds of various things, including Twitter timelines. Ironically, a few days before the session (October 11 by my estimation), Twitter made API changes that broke existing RSS feeds. The feeds I was watching in Google Reader all stopped updating at the same time (last visible entries dated October 10).

Twitter unveiled their new API in September and, among other things, dropped support for RSS. RSS feeds are still available on an interim basis, but apparently they'll be gone for good as of March 5, 2013. Hopefully Google will come up with a workaround for Google Reader by then.

In the meantime, if you want to read tweets in Google Reader, you need to reload your Twitter RSS feeds. After a lengthy web search, I found a tip on this thread that, combined with something I picked up on another site (which one I no longer remember), seems to work.

I'm assuming you already have a Google account and use Google Reader. Open a new browser tab and paste the following verbatim in the URL bar:

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3D

Don't hit Enter yet; we're not quite done. Append the screen name of the Twitter account you want to follow in Reader. For instance, to follow me (and, trust me, I do not recommend this), add parubin after %3D. Now hit Enter. If you're lucky, you'll be told that you Reader found the feed and be given an opportunity to subscribe to it.

Here's where it gets tricky. The screen name is case-sensitive; but sometimes the correct case does not work, and you have to experiment with intentional errors. (No, I'm not making that up.) I just tried to subscribe to my own feed (against my own advice above) using

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3Dparubin

and was told my feed does not exist (news to me!). So I repeated it with

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3DParubin

(note the incorrect capitalization of the "P") and was rewarded with the option to subscribe. In another case, I tried to repair my subscription to the feed for @ThisIsTrue. Note the camel case. Appending ThisIsTrue after %3D failed, but appending ThisisTrue (incorrect lower case on the second "i") succeeded. I'm skipping over a few unsuccessful attempts. Finding the correct single letter to muff is a trial-and-error process, happily not needed in all cases, sadly needed occasionally.