A few weeks ago, Twitter removed the RSS/Atom feeds from their search pages. Annoying.

That doesn’t mean you can get the RSS feeds any longer- it’s just a little more manual.

It’s simple, really:

For an Atom feed:

Notice that I’ve replaced spaces with pluses (+).
See the Atom Feed yourself (and edit it accordingly)

If you’d rather have an RSS feed:

You can even request a search dedicated to a particular hashtag:

Just precede your desired hashtag with the URL-encoded # sign: %23

Hope that helps you out, @GenevieveJooste.

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 day Twitter killed my Twitter app.

This isn’t a post written by someone who is bitter and angry. It is from someone who loves Twitter and really enjoys developing with the Twitter API. As a Twitter fan-boy I also want to see Twitter continue to grow and advance. The problem is that I have notice a trend- Twitter taking ideas from independent developers and integrating them into their own service, rendering our apps obsolete.

Now you might argue, perhaps rightly, that Twitter should have been fulfilling the same service my app provided from the beginning. In fact, my app really only was a work-around for Twitter’s own limitations- and didn’t effectively do much. Still, one site ranked it among the top-ten Twitter apps of 2010 and at least one of my users thinks that FeedTwit was better than Twitter’s current solution. If I was more cynical, on the other hand, I would think that Twitter sold someone the exclusive rights to do what my app already did.

At the same time, my app wasn’t the only pirated independent Twitter app recently. I used to love http://tweetree.com/ – but Twitter integrated so many of their ideas into New Twitter that there is no advantage to using them any longer.

My point: it is not in Twitter’s interest to keep pirating ideas from its developers.

Why Twitter should encourage independent developers

1. Encourages creative thinking and innovation- this is perhaps the biggest advantages for Twitter in rolling out the API to independent developers, like me. However, when Twitter takes our ideas and integrates them into their service, they take away the reason for us to innovate. Why should I put a year and a half into developing my Twitter app when I can be afraid that suddenly Twitter will make my app obsolete?
2. Independent data- my app provided valuable, independent data from my users. In my case I could tell you what time of day or what day of week people were most active on Twitter. This was useful not only to marketers- to know when to share their message to receive the most eyes, but also to other developers- to know when to shut down their apps for service. I can’t provide this valuable information any longer.
3. Less for them to support- my Twitter app was far from perfect. It seems there was always something going wrong or breaking. One time, while testing, I even accidentally sent 10,000 DM’s (and accompanying text messages) to my personal cell phone. But if I spend my time on working through these issues, Twitter can instead focus on providing a stable network which benefits everyone.

What should Twitter do instead?

1. Keep it simple- I personally think the Twitter website should be very simple (like before New Twitter). Let independent developers customize its use based upon the laws of supply and demand: if an idea is good it will survive, if not, it will die. I understand why Twitter would want to innovate on their own website: fewer and fewer people are using Twitter.com and they will (eventually) need eyes on their website if they ever want to make money from advertising on their web page. Let me propose another means of generating revenue- charge developers for white-listing their app. This would allow people to develop apps to a certain point and then force us to monetize it in order to pay for the white-listing.
2. Keep it broad- recently Twitter has said its going to discontinue supporting XML. Previously it has threatened to devalue RSS. With limitations like this it not only requires developers to limit the ways they can interact with the API but it limits which developers can participate (without learning a different way of interfacing with the API). Why would Twitter want to put all their eggs into one coding basket?
3. Keep it consistent- recently Twitter identified that it was going to run out of numbers to represent each particular status. The fix to this was called “snowflake” and it was a real fiasco. Many apps broke (including my own) despite Twitter’s warnings to make sure “snowflake” wouldn’t affect it- I didn’t think it would, but I ended up being wrong. A lot of heartbreak could be solved if they simply used the versioning system they have already built into their API. This would have kept an API consistent through the transition to larger status IDs.

What is my next step?

Back to square one. I initially called my app FeedTwit because it was designed to convert RSS feeds into Twitter direct messages. Only after I rolled this out did I realize most people were using it to convert their Twitter mentions into DMs  (and then text messages). Now I am back to only supporting RSS feeds. Even if there isn’t nearly as much interest as before, you could still use FeedTwit to:

• Get notifications of mentions for other Twitter accounts you manage.
• Keep up with a Twitter list
• Keep up with other social networks, for instance LinkedIn, through your Twitter account.
• Get news, weather, and even traffic reports to your cell phone by Text message, from your Twitter account.
• Track a keyword or hashtag discussions on Twitter.
• Take any RSS/Atom feed and send it to your Twitter account as a direct message.

UPDATE: Apparently the FTC is now investigating: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-01/ftc-said-to-have-begun-antitrust-inquiry-into-twitter-s-developer-policies.html

UPDATE: Yet another idea Twitter “borrowed” from third-party developers: http://support.twitter.com/articles/20075772

How have you seen Twitter take over ideas from independent developers? Am I being too harsh on the Twitter API team? Add your comments below.

Recently FeedTwit, my Twitter app that sends users Twitter RSS feeds by direct messages has started offering Groupon deals to my users. Why?

1. Groupon offers great deals in many cities throughout the United States and Canada. These deals can save you anywhere from 50% to 90% off the regular price.
2. Groupon is a fun way to explore your own town. Groupon deals range from restaurants to services to local events.
3. Groupon is perfect for people participating in a social network, such as Twitter, because we only get the deal if enough people take advantage of the deal. If we were to use our Twitter accounts to promote the deal we can insure that we all get the benefits. Please share these deals to your heart’s content!
   • Share over Twitter using the Twitter button on the page
   • Share over Facebook with the “Like” button on the page. If you add a comment your friends will be able to see it and participate as well
4. I gotta pay the bills. Let’s face it, it costs me money to provide FeedTwit to my users. I’ve really struggled on how to fund this service in a way that is unobtrusive or obnoxious. Groupon is fun and offers my users a good opportunity. It’s a win-win situation.

So- help support FeedTwit while you get great deals in your home town by signing up and participating in a Groupon deal. You can even use FeedTwit to notify you of each day’s Groupon deal for your city. Which cities have Groupon deals? See for yourself and be sure to share them with your friends!

Have you taken advantage of a Groupon deal yet? What was your experience? Is this a fair way for me to cover my FeedTwit expenses? Add your thoughts, below, in the comments

Thanks to all my loyal users- and pressure from Twitter to update the program before the oauth-apocalypse on August 16th- I have completely rewritten FeedTwit and made some improvements along the way.

The first thing you will notice is a site redesign. Thanks to Brazilian web developer Rafael Cavalcante site has a great new look and mascot. I have enjoyed working with him in this project and am sure he could help you with any web development you might need, as well.

The second major change is how you login. I will no longer be sending people unique passwords for them to login. Instead they will use Twitter’s Oauth interface. There are many advantages to this- many of which are behind the scenes- but the greatest is that you don’t have to remember yet another password to use FeedTwit. Instead you will login to FeedTwit through your own Twitter account.

One important note about oauth login… You have until August 16th to connect with the new FeedTwit or you will no longer receive any messages. That is the day (also known as the oauth-apocalypse) where Twitter is requiring all programs to connect with their users over oauth. Consider yourself warned.

Some of the other advantages of this new way of account verification will lead to:

• Quicker turn around for your @ replies
• No more duplicated messages (BUT PLEASE READ BELOW)
• Everything is just a little simpler- basically you just need to press the button on the FeedTwit homepage in order to begin

About duplicated messages
Previous users of FeedTwit will have to take one extra step in order to prevent duplicated messages: after you login to FeedTwit you will have to delete the RSS feed associated with your @ replies. Without boring you with the programming details, this is how I used to know if anyone mentioned you on Twitter. If you don’t delete this, you will receive messages by the new way AND by the old way = duplicated messages. I wish I could automatically remove this for you, but there’s no way I can do it without harming people using the service who haven’t had a chance to login.

I have worked hard to keep the rest of the site up and running through this transition. This includes the popular Twitter uptime status widget- that tells you if Twitter is running or not- and the Twitter usage statistics page- which shows you when people are on Twitter. Along with this I have cleaned-up the Twitter cell phone page, which keeps a list of phones people use on Twitter (be sure to add your own, by the way).

I hope you enjoy the newly redesigned FeedTwit site (and hope it works a little better). Tell me what you think in the comments below.

Here are a few simple things you can do with your Twitter account to help your website’s SEO:

1. Tweet with Keywords. If there is only one thing you do, be sure to use keywords in your Tweet. This way, in the least, your tweet might appear in personalized results at the bottom of search engine requests for that keyword. If someone trusts your opinion enough to follow you, they might take your suggestion when you mention a what they are looking for in a tweet. Now, I am not suggesting you send a tweet with just keywords- please don’t spam! Nor should keywords be unnaturally squeezed into every tweet. Just find something productive to say that happens to include your keywords.
2. Always Include a Link. I’ve experienced the affect a link on Twitter can have on SEO. I’ve seen previously unindexed pages without any links going to them suddenly indexed by Google once they appear on Twitter- eventhough Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to a link. Get the Googlebot to your page by Tweeting it. Please remember that indexing and ranking are two different things. A page needs to be indexed in order to rank but a page won’t rank just because it is indexed.
3. Use an SEO-Friendly URL Shortener. The number of URL shorteners is growing in direct proportion to the influence of Twitter. This is because we want to share something, but need to do it within the 140 character limit that makes Twitter so much fun (that is how I think of it- really!). Don’t just pick a URL shortener because it offers the shortest possible link or because it comes with your favorite Twitter app. You need to make sure it throws a “301 Moved Permanently” header code. This code tells the one following the link to the new page that this old link is now in a new location- as opposed to a 302 code that tells them this change is only temporary. This is important for SEO because Google flows page authority through a 301 redirect but not through a 302. Search Engine Land has the definitive list of URL shorteners.
4. Use a Twitter Link Monitoring Service. There are a couple websites out there, twitturly is my favorite, that tracks links shared by a particular Twitter account. Make sure your Twitter account is being tracked by one of these websites. Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links from their website, negating any link benefit from them, but these link monitoring sites often allow link authority to follow through the link. This does more than build links to your website- or whatever website you mention- but it also the content of your tweet becomes the anchor text (clickable words) of the link. This way, if you’ve used your keywords in your tweet, you will have a higher-quality keyword-based link. (Not all Twitter link monitoring services allow you to determine your keywords- Topsy uses the title tag of the webpage)
   

Can you think of any more tweaks to your Twitter account to benefit SEO? Share them with the rest of us, in the comments below.

News is coming out of Kyrgyzstan today of a revolt. This is the first successful revolt that used Twitter. Apparently the Kyrgyzstan opposition leader’s Twitter account has been reporting the news to her followers as well as international press (hence a couple English tweets). An NPR reporter has created a Twitter list of people in Kyrgyzstan (translated) who are also talking about the events.

Although Twitter has been used in previous civil unrest- from the Iranian protests to dissent in Georgia (which, rumors say, lead to Russians attempting to shut down Twitter’s service)- this is Twitters first successful revolution.

It will probably not be the last. As Twitter grows in popularity, especially in non-Western countries, we can expect more. This is because Twitter offers:

• Efficient communication- If you can’t say it in 140 characters, is it worth saying? 140 characters can communicate a lot: just look at the Kyrgyzstan opposition leader’s tweets (translated)
• Mobile communication- You don’t have to be sitting at your computer to receive a tweet: you can get Twitter over your cell phone through your data plan or SMS.
• Nearly instant communication- With all the ways to connect to Twitter, you can receive these messages fairly quickly
• First hand communication- You can get information from people who are there, right now.
• Unfiltered communication- You choose who you follow so you get information from sources you trust.

These are the same things that make Twitter valuable for marketing.

• Efficient communication- People aren’t interested in reading your long explanation on why your product is superior. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, you’ve already lost your customer.
• Mobile communication- Why limit your marketing reach to people who are sitting at a computer? Social media is becoming the new Search Engine: people ask their networks about where they should eat, what movie they should see, or what doctor they recommend.
• Nearly instant communication- Sometimes I just want a quick answer to a question, and social networks can provide that from people I trust.
• First hand communication- Rather than a static web page telling me about a business or product, I can learn about it from someone who has used it themselves.
• Unfiltered communication- Rather than getting information from whatever website Google determines is giving me the right answer to my question, social networks help me get information from people I trust.

This is why if you are marketing anything, you need a presence on a social network like Twitter.

What do you think? Will we see more revolutions or civil unrest organized over Twitter? What does this say about the value of Twitter? Does Twitter have value outside of revolutions?

Leave your comments, below.

Last year I used Google to fill out my basketball brackets. It didn’t do too well. This year I decided to use Twitter to fill out my March Madness brackets.

Disclosure: although I am just getting to this post now, I did the research on Monday- honest.

As a proud Jayhawk, I was glad to see Twitter pick Kansas to win the entire tournament. In fact, it predicted that all the #1 seeds would make it to the Final Four.

In addition to the Final Four, Twitter also chose these teams to be part of the Elite Eight:

• Ohio State
• Florida
• Washington
• Notre Dame

It also predicted eight upsets in the first round:

• Houston
• Ohio
• Florida State
• Minnesota
• Oakland
• Florida
• Washington
• Missouri

You can fill in the rest by deduction.

How can I quantify these results?
In order to compare teams, to see which would win, I’d need a way to quantify the teams. Last year I used GoogleFight to judge the winners. This basically figures out how many pages have been indexed for a particular term and declares the term with the most pages indexed to be the winner. In quantifying this I couldn’t just use the name of the university- that would favor teams named after states- so I had to lengthen the keyword string by adding “basketball” to the search string (as I did last year). By this method, Washington would win (just like it predicted last year).

Because Google didn’t predict the winner very accurately, I wanted to use Twitter to fill out my brackets this year. How could I quantify Twitter?

At first I though I would use Google site search to search Twitter for mentions of the teams. This involves adding “site:twitter.com” to a Google query string, plus the keyword, to give me the number of times a keyword is mentioned on Twitter. By this method Texas would win the tournament. Not likely!

I ended up using my favorite Twitter linking site, Tweetmeme. This would tell me how many people shared links regarding each team. Like Google valuing links into a site to determine which is the better site, I would use links shared over Twitter to judge the winner of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourament. The team with the most links, won the game. By this method, Kansas would win. Now that’s a good prediction!

I’ll return here to comment on my results as the tournament unfolds. You can also follow me on Twitter: dizzySEO to keep up with my method.

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.