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.

First of all, Twitter recently rendered my app obsolete- something I wrote about in my recent blog post about how Twitter is stealing ideas from independent developers. At this point very few people are using it.

Second of all, with the few people finding my app useful (and it is still useful for things besides communication between terrorists) it is easy for me to monitor. While I cannot see the exact content of every DM my app sends to its users, I can assure you that the RSS feeds people are having sent to their Twitter accounts by DM are all benign. (By the way, if the FBI, NSA, or any other law enforcement entity would like to look at the data people are sharing through my Twitter app, I’d be happy to share it with them. All they have to do is ask- no warrant or subpena necessary.)

Thirdly, you don’t have to take my word for it. In order to use my app you’d have to follow @FeedTwit- basically I couldn’t send an account a DM without them following the account. If these allegedly Taliban twitter accounts are using my app, they would be following @FeedTwit- and the list of accounts following @FeedTwit are publicly available.

Fourth, I think it is laughable that someone would accuse me of supporting terrorism. I am a native citizen of the United States and even an Eagle Scout. I’m not exactly the type who supports the Taliban.

The thing that cheezes me off about this is that these blog posts give nefarious people an idea of how they might use Twitter to avoid detection and communicate malevolently. Right now someone is getting a “good” idea on how to use Twitter for evil.

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

/tag – This is optional but if you want to limit the RSS feed to a particular tag you will need to insert a / and then the tag.

For example, if you wanted to keep track of all the bookmarks I’ve tagged “SEO” you would use:

http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/davidzimm/seo

If you just wanted all my wonderful delicious bookmarks, including all things Star Wars, Gardening, and recipes, you would use:

http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/davidzimm

In case delicious changes this URL format, I’ll keep you up to date in this post. I would also love to see the new “Stacks” feature have an RSS feed. This would be a great way to share content about a topic (like the SEO stack I’ve created).

The reason delicious RSS feeds are so important to me, is because I use them to populate and archive useful links I share through my Twitter account (@dizzySEO). Here’s how I do it.

1. When I find a great SEO article (that I want to reference later or don’t have time to read at this moment) I bookmark it in delicious.
2. I take the RSS feed from my delicious bookmarks (tagged “SEO”) and give it to TwitterFeed.
3. TwitterFeed is set up to send the links to my Twitter account automatically, trickling them in the stream throughout the day.

This way I have the following advantages:

1. I have an archive of helpful SEO articles in my delicious account
2. I have a useful Twitter account about SEO- sharing useful information about SEO (at least I hope so).
3. Because I have shared them through Twitter, I consequently have a helpful paper.li account about SEO with a summary of the content I’ve shared every day.

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.

One of the ways Corey suggested we could stop processing and start working is by managing your inboxes better but putting all communication into one place. Pick one email account and direct everything to that one place.

This is really hard when it comes to social media. Those of us involved in internet marketing are typically participating in many different social networks. Constantly monitoring social networks is hard work to process and can be a big distraction.

Then I thought about how my Twitter app, FeedTwit, could help. You can use it to send your Twitter mentions by email. This way when anyone mentions you on Twitter you will be able to see it in the same place you’ve directed all of your communication. Once it’s in your inbox, you can then decide if there is something you have to do about it (reply, thank someone, answer a question, etc) or just delete it.

There’s more… since FeedTwit can send any RSS to your Twitter account as a direct message, you can use it to help monitor important RSS feeds or even other social media accounts- like your LinkedIn contacts- all in one location: your inbox.

It’s easy to start using FeedTwit so start today.

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.

This information is available from your LinkedIn RSS feed. Although you might not have heard about it, LinkedIn generates an RSS feed unique for your network.

With FeedTwit you can take the RSS feed from your LinkedIn network and receive your network updates as direct messages in Twitter. Why you want to do this:

• The LinkedIn RSS feed not only tells you when someone updates their LinkedIn status, but when they connect with someone or update their profile (like changing jobs or joining a new group).
• Whether or not you follow someone on Twitter, you will be notified of their LinkedIn status. This might help you keep your Twitter account more personal while keeping in touch with your LinkedIn account.
• Since you receive this information by direct message this preserves the privacy of your network and spares your Twitter followers from information they are not interested in. In this way FeedTwit is better than TwitterFeed.

Where can you find your LinkedIn RSS feed?

1. While logged into LinkedIn, go to “Home” by clicking on that word in the upper-left of your page
2. In the middle of this page, below your inbox, you will see a headline that reads “Network Updates” with an RSS feed icon next to it. Click on that icon.
3. On the next page you will see the different RSS feeds that LinkedIn offers. On the left is the feed for your Network Updates. Press the “Enable” radio button and LinkedIn will generate a URL for you.

Get your updates in your Twitter account as direct messages

1. Visit FeedTwit (who can take an RSS feed and send it to Twitter).
2. Place the LinkedIn network RSS feed URL and submit it to FeedTwit.
3. The next time someone updates their LinkedIn profile, you will receive a direct message from Twitter, telling you what they are doing.
4. BONUS: if you have paired your Twitter account with your cell phone, you will receive this direct message as a text message
5. DOUBLE BONUS: if you want, you can use FeedTwit to get all your Twitter @ replies as text messages

Connect with David Zimmerman on LinkedIn and Twitter

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.

Did you know you can follow the updates from a Twitter list even from your cell phone? You don’t need an smart phone or even a data plan- you can get Twitter list statuses by text message.

First, you’ll need the RSS feed of the Twitter list updates. This will involve a little use of the Twitter API- but nothing more difficult than typing a URL into a web browser.

The Twitter API tells you how to get Twitter list updates (which it calls “statuses”):

http://api.twitter.com/1/user/lists/list_id/statuses.format

In this case, let’s use @Cara’s Charlotte Food and Drink list as an example. In our case we’ll need to change some specific items in this URL to get the RSS feed (formatted in Atom). First, change the user to the Twitter username who created the list. Since @Cara took the time to come up with this list, we need to type her username in there (without the “@”, of course). Second you need to replace list_id with the name of the list: food-drink. Third we will replace the format with the way we want to get the information, in this case we want an atom RSS feed.

After these replacements we will get the Twitter List RSS feed’s URL:

http://api.twitter.com/1/cara/lists/food-drink/statuses.atom

Second, to get that Twitter list by text message, we need to use FeedTwit. We could take that RSS feed to any feed reader in order to follow it. But it would be more useful to receive those restaurant updates from the Twitter list as text messages- to help us decide where to eat tonight.

FeedTwit is a free Twitter app that can send the contents of an RSS feed to your Twitter account as a direct message. If your phone has been paired to your Twitter account- to get Twitter text messages- you will then receive the RSS feeds as text messages on your phone!

CAUTION: Some Twitter lists follow many many people. That means you could potentially get many many updates, direct messages, and text messages. Use cautiously. I recommend you have an unlimited text message plan before you follow a Twitter list through FeedTwit.

What is your favorite Twitter list? Do you know a Twitter list that would be helpful to get by text message? Leave them in the comments below.

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.

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).

The service I am thinking of is called Twitturly. When you visit their site you will see the most popular links shared on Twitter. You can also ask it to only show links from a particular user. Take my Twitter app, FeedTwit, for example. You can see the different sponsors by just giving the username for the FeedTwit Twitter account. (In fact, if you want the SEO advantages of adding your link to this list, you can sponsor FeedTwit).

Now the Twitturly user pages are not normally reachable by the Google spider. Unless you have an already popular link you have to get to your results through a search, which the spider won’t be able to follow. To get the real SEO advantages of this service you will have to put the link to them somewhere Google can find it- like I just did.

The best part about Twitturly is that it generates an RSS feed for each result. I love RSS feeds (sending RSS feeds to Twitter was one of the first purposes of FeedTwit) and I think they are seriously underrated in SEO circles. You can take an RSS feed to ping any number of services (including Google itself) to tell them to pay attention to your site (which is another thing I do for those who sponsor FeedTwit). You can submit your RSS feed to various feed aggregators, which then pass on SEO link juice to your site. Besides the SEO advantages RSS is a convenience that will keep people engaged in you and your site.

Have you found any other sites that mirror Twitter updates and pass link juice for better SEO? Just add them to the comments below.

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.

The Yahoo! Developer Network explains how to get local traffic updates through an RSS feed. Although that example might be intimidating to someone who isn’t used to working with a code, let me simplify it for you. All you need to do is add your zip code to the end of the following URL:

For instance, although I live in a suburb of Charlotte, NC, I would add the zip code for my workplace at the end of that URL to get traffic updates on my way to work in downtown Charlotte:

Next you take the URL and give it to FeedTwit in order to send the RSS feed to your Twitter account by direct message. Typically when people use RSS feeds and Twitter they think they have to use a service like TwitterFeed. Now, TwitterFeed is a great service when you want to broadcast the contents of an RSS feed through your Twitter account. In this case I don’t think people living in New York (or anywhere else, for that matter) are interested in receiving a traffic report from Charlotte, NC (and would simply unfollow you for providing irrelevant information). Rather than broadcast an RSS feed to all your followers like TwitterFeed, FeedTwit sends the feed’s contents to you as a direct message- that only you will see. Since this will come to your Twitter account as a direct message, you can read it from your favorite Twitter app or even through text message- if you have set up device updates through your Twitter account- even if you don’t have a data plan on your cell phone. Pretty cool, huh!

It is simple to use FeedTwit. Visit the FeedTwit homepage and login and tell FeedTwit to send you the RSS feed you have just created.

Pretty soon you will get your local traffic reports through your Twitter account.

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.

TwitterFeed is a good tool- it sends your favorite information to your Twitter account, posting it as an update using RSS. TwitterFeed is an easy way to promote your blog, for instance. I don’t mind you if you use TwitterFeed for that purpose, but stop using the Twitter public updates as your own personal feed reader! I am following you in Twitter because I am interested in what you have to say. Part of what you have to say is in your personal feed, for sure, but I don’t want to know what your favorite feeds have to say- if I did, I would have already subscribed to them!

Don’t use TwitterFeed to post your favorite feeds into your updates. Instead use @FeedTwit. Rather than posting the contents of a feed to your Twitter timeline, FeedTwit sends the contents of your feed to Twitter by direct message- so only you see it.

This way you still get all the benefits of RSS while I still follow you on Twitter. That is how FeedTwit is better than TwitterFeed.

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.

The first place to go is a feed validator. There are all sorts of these services available, but the most common one seems to be feedvalidator.org. If there is an error in your feed this tool will tell you what it is. It will also give you suggestions to make your feed more compatible with a broader range of RSS feed readers. They even give you a cool graphic to show everyone that you have a valid RSS feed. You can also try the W3C validation service, that will do the same thing.

I’ve noticed that some tools will not be able to use your feed even if one of the validation tools says its a valid feed. This could be because you are using a different RSS format. There are many formats available (xml, rss, rdf, rss2, atom, etc.) which means there are different ways of expressing your information. If a tool is expecting to receive the information in a different format, you might as well be speaking a completely different language. This is where the feed converters come it. For instance the Feed Jumbler will take a feed and generate a rss or atom feed as a result.

You can also use feed converters to “fix” a feed that is otherwise unreadable by a tool. I have found that FeedJumbler is able to trick a tool into being able to use a feed that it is otherwise unable to read. Instead of giving your tool the original RSS feed, give it the feed that FeedJumbler creates after processing the original feed for you.

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