dizzysoft softwareDoes FeedTwit Support Terrorism?
I recently read a couple articles about this Twitter app that the Taliban, and presumably other organizations, are using to support their terrorist agendas. Apparently this app allows people to bypass the publicly facing Twitter content and send content over the more private DM system. In turn these terrorists get their DMs sent to them by text message to the front lines in rural Afghanistan.
Horrible!
Unfortunately the app in question is one I wrote and continue to manage- FeedTwit.
How to get RSS feeds from the new Delicious
The new delicious is finally up. Not all that much different but I am excited because I use it every day.
One of the features I use every day is the RSS. When I heard delicious had enabled RSS feeds today, I went to the site right-away to set them up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find them anywhere.
After going through my archives I have been able to reconstruct them. Here’s the format they are currently using:
http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/username/tag
username – your delicious username, without the brackets
Save Time in Social Media
The other week I heard Corey Creed present at SEMCLT about time management and efficiency improvement. It was a great presentation with a lot of practical tips. Before hearing Corey speak, I never thought of my Twitter App as a time-saving tool.
One of the key ideas Corey presented was the difference between “processing” and “working.” Processing is administrative tasks like checking your email and monitoring your social networks. While that is related to work, and can be a lot of work, it isn’t really work. In fact, it can keep you from getting to work while giving you the illusion that you are really working.
Follow your LinkedIn Network through Twitter
The other day LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership. Not only does this partnership allow your LinkedIn network updates to post in your Twitter account, but you can conversely post (all or some) Twitter updates to your LinkedIn account.
Although I think this is a great idea, LinkedIn is so much more than another social network to provide status updates. I want to know when people in my network make new contacts, join new groups, and even change jobs. This is something that is missing from the new LinkedIn-Twitter partnership- even if all my contacts were to connect their accounts.
Get Twitter Lists on Your Phone by Text Message
Last week Twitter started rolling out lists. These are a great way to categorize Twitter users into manageable groups. I think, as people get used to lists, they will provide a new usefulness for Twitter.
For example, as an SEO, I have created a list of Twitter users who work for Google and different Google services on Twitter. A Twitter friend has created a list of restaurants in Charlotte that have Twitter accounts (and sometimes post deals or specials). What’s great about these lists is you can follow them without following specific individuals’ accounts. In other words, you can keep up with these users whenever you want without them filling up your Twitter timeline.
Manage Your Social Networks – BarCamp Charlotte
Here’s the presentation I gave at BarCamp Charlotte: Manage Your Social Networks. You can see me get Kanye’d during my presentation’s pitch on YouTube.
Important links from this presentation:
- Get your Facebook friend’s updates by RSS
- Get your LinkedIn RSS feed
- Get your RSS feeds as Twitter direct messages from FeedTwit
- Connect with David Zimmerman‘s Social Networks
- David does Search Engine Optimization for WebsiteBiz
If you can think of other ways to get RSS feeds from social networks or how to connect your social networks with RSS, please leave them in the comments, below.
More on Twitter SEO Link Building
Previously I talked about how you might use Twitter for SEO, specifically to help with link building. I forgot to mention another important part of building SEO through links using Twitter. There are a couple of sites that are mirroring Twitter updates. Some of these will actually take the link and expand it to show it with an appropriate anchor tag and a follow-link (the gold-standard of SEO link building because they are able to pass link juice).
Get Local Traffic Through Your Twitter Account
Twitter is a great way to communicate information you are uniquely interested in. You follow people on Twitter because they provide information you are looking for and don’t find anywhere else.
Twitter is even more useful when it is used as a mobile app. You can receive all sorts of useful tidbits through your cell phone or even as a text message, if you don’t have a data plan on your phone.
Here’s one example: you can get local traffic updates through your Twitter account. Here’s how: create an RSS feed with traffic information and ask FeedTwit to send it to your Twitter account as a direct message.
Give Me More Than Your TwitterFeed
On my Twitter account I have tried to follow everyone who follows me- as long as they remotely relate to SEO or they live in my area (okay, I make exceptions for Darth Vader and Wil Wheaton). The other day I started to follow a couple new people on Twitter when I suddenly noticed my entire timeline was filled with their updates. I don’t mind a person who talks a lot but then I realized all I was getting was junk from TwitterFeed.
Help! My RSS Feed Isn’t Working!
I have been suggesting you do some really unique things with an RSS feed using a lot of different programs that exist throughout the internet. Sometimes they don’t seem to work really well. This is because the internet is the great equalizer: you can’t tell if the article you are reading is from a world-wide recognized authority on the subject or a crazy old man whose son gave him a computer. The same is true with programs you find on the internet- some are created by professional programmers and others by people who hack together whatever code they can find whether they understand it or not.
What can you do (in the world of RSS) when a feed produced by one service doesn’t want to be read by another? Don’t worry, there’s hope for you.