How to get a Twitter feed in Google Reader Friday, January 09, 2009

Image representing Google Reader as depicted i...Image via CrunchBaseIf you happen to use Google Reader and have ever tried to add your twitter feed you'll know that they are incompatible. This is apparently because Google Reader doesn't support the authentication Twitter requires.

After wasting some time trying to use Yahoo Pipes as a conduit which was one solution thrown up on a web search, I finally thought I would try Feedburner which is the service that provides a RSS feed of this blog.

It was surprisingly easy and worked first time. Here's how.
  1. At the bottom of your Twitter home page on the left hand side, you'll see a box marked "RSS". Copy the associated link location by right clicking on the box and selecting to copy link location.
  2. Setup/Login into your Feedburner account
  3. Within Feedburner, go to "My Feeds", which is accessed at the top of the screen, and paste the Twitter link you copied into the field under the heading "Burn a feed right this instant".
  4. The link you copied in is password protected and so you now need to add your twitter username and password into the link as follows
    http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/nnnnnnn.rss

    where "n" at the suffix represents the numbers of your unique feed.
  5. Click the "Next" button adjacent to the Feedburner field you've entered the link into
  6. On the subsequent Feedburner page you can modify the resultant feed title and link if you wish to
  7. Click on the button marked "Activate Link". This makes your feed live and provides you with a feed url which you should copy.
  8. Back in Google Reader, add a subscription and paste in the feed url.
And that's it.

Given that Twitter no longer provides a feed via IM clients, you may find this an easy way to keep on top of your Twitter updates.
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posted by John Wilson @ 12:49 PM Permanent Link ,

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