dizzysoft softwareGet 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.
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.