Twitter RSS feed generator

August 14, 2011 - 2:02 am IST

Twitter has removed most of its RSS feed links from its site over the past year. But fear not, it is still possible to generate Twitter RSS feeds. [Update - We'll for now there is, Twitter has announced that it plans on removing all RSS support from March 2013, read more here.]

We’ve covered how to manually generate Twitter RSS feeds for users’ profiles, how to generate a Twitter list RSS feed, and how to create a Twitter search RSS feed earlier.

To make things easier we have created these forms which will generate Twitter RSS feeds for profiles, Twitter lists, and searches.

Generate an RSS Feed for a Twitter user

To generate an RSS feed form a Twitter user's profile all you have to do is replace "thesociable" with the user's Twitter username. Our original Twitter RSS post has instructions on other methods to get a user's Twitter RSS feed

Generate an RSS Feed for a Twitter List

To generate an RSS feed for a Twitter list you will need two elements; the Twitter user's name and the name of their Twitter list. Thankfully both of these are easy to get. Simply visit the Twitter user's list page and note the details from the page address. Our Twitter List RSS article has more details on how to do this.

Generate a Twitter search RSS feed

Twitter search RSS feeds can be tricky to generate, but it can be done. Have a look at your Twitter search RSS articles to learn how to create a Twitter search RSS feed manually - but if you just want a simple search RSS, use this form.

For location based searches you will need to generate a geocode first. Find out how to do that here

There you go, let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.

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Filed under Tags: #epicwin, api, atom, atom feeds, bloggers, blogs, design, feed, geol, hack, irish, rss, rss feeds, search, Social Networking, social web, subscribe, topsy, tutorial, tweetdeck, tweets, Twitter, twitter ecosystem, twitter list, twitter search, ubermedia.

Discussion

46 comments

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EvilGenius

I dont know how to use this?: https://twitter-atom.appspot.com/

I want an atom feed that will generate feed from a users account to mine? how to do this... please help!

consuempresa

1 Like

https://twitter-atom.appspot.com/ Works just perfect. INcluso para los trinos despues de marzo del 2013.

snarfed

1 Like

here's an alternative that will keep working after twitter drops the v1 API in march 2013: https://twitter-atom.appspot.com/

more background: http://snarfed.org/2013-01-16_atom_feeds_for_facebook_and_twitter

orvn

Question: For some reason my Twitter feed http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=goinnative only fetches tweets that are recent (3 days ago and sooner). Any idea why that is, or how date stamps can be inserted into this URL query?

thesociable moderator

@orvn A search on Twitter only seems to show two results https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=goinnative&src=typdSame on Google Readerhttp://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fsearch.twitter.com%2Fsearch.atom%3Fq%3Dgoinnative

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Insplisity

1 Like

Fantastic! A super useful tool, thanks!

milnews_ca

Not working for http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=SignUp4Sandra ?????

drewmoh

Same problem as @opmi . I don't think this is working anymore.

pdscott

@drewmoh @opmi Hi - have a go of it in Firefox - it seems Chrome is having issues- let me know if that works. There are a few other option we can try

opmi

@pdscott @drewmoh @opmi It's not working for me on Firefox. :( Any ideas?

jacobcepstein

@pdscott @drewmoh @opmi https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/11831

opmi

I know this is an old thread, but I can't get Google Reader to import my list using any of the tricks mentioned below. The link is: https://api.twitter.com/1/opmi/lists/follow/statuses.atom. Any ideas?

JAaronAnderson

this is a start but more complex, I wish to stream my twitter account timeline and get my tweets but be able to show only mentions that are in MY owner timeline (so if I delete a post from my timeline) I only get those sanitized mentions&replies even though it may still return if you search my @jaaronanderson ... Im guessing the only way to filter is to create a #hashtag that Im only using... which works until someone else uses that tag...

amartinezsierra

Excelente mil gracias es de mucha utilidad!

WeddingsZone

Wow, great Rss Feed generator, very adding and easy to use, thanks alot

AmandaWebb

That's brilliant but I was hoping to make a 'wordle' from the feed and 'wordle' tells me the 'q' parameter is missing. Any ideas?

pdscott

@AmandaWebb What's the RSS url?

AmandaWebb

@pdscott @AmandaWebb

https://api.twitter.com/1/spiderworking/lists/social-media-peeps/statuses.atom

PatrikHodapp

I created a RSS Feed for Walfisch_FR at twitter under the URL https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=Walfisch_FR and can get it without problems in f.e. Opera but googleReader wont except it - why is this?

pdscott

@PatrikHodapp Have you tried to open the RSS feed in Firefox and select Google reader from the dropdown menu. This usually works for us (rather than opening the URL when inside Reader)

PatrikHodapp

@pdscott @PatrikHodapp

Managed it at the end, thanks once more

JessPalotas

1 Like

Thank you so much for posting this!!!!!!!!!!

MinardBrian

That helped...Thanks..RSS feeds come handy when you want to download tweets via a program :)

http://www.sciaticnervepainblog.com/

haraldwalker

The http://search.twitter.com/search.rss url doesn't seem to be working any longer.

LarsHornborg

Thanks for excellent info. So going to the next level, say I wanted to create an aggregated feed of both #ieclnu and @ieclnu - meaning posts that are either tagged or from a specific user - how could this be done?

pdscott

@LarsHornborg @ieclnu

Try this link (you might have to copy and past rather than click)

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%23ieclnu OR from%3Aieclnu

It looks like Twitter doesn't like the @ symbol in these searches

NupHero

@pdscott This is amazing post. I found it's very useful for me to generate RSS feed for my Twitter search. One small question, what is the update interval of Twitter search RSS feed update? Actually, I'm using .atom, is there any different in update interval compare with rss? Thanks you so much.

pdscott

1 Like

Thanks @NupHero I hope it was useful. The feeds should update in real-time (or near enough) as it is using Twitter's own system. Although if you are using Google Reader I think you do miss some tweets - if GReader updates itself every 30 mins and the RSS feed holds 50 tweets (for argument's sake) if 60 tweets are being posted every 30 mins these 10 won't be recorded, as far as I know.

This would always be the case if Twitter hadn't removed the link for Twitter search terms so it's best to be very specific with what you are searching for. For really popular terms the Twitter API would be best.

NupHero

1 Like

@pdscott I also have a small question. Is there anyway to get RSS feed for Twitter list combine with any other operators such as hashtag or keyword? That'll be perfect. Thanks for reading.

NupHero

@pdscott Thanks you for that useful information. I used Google Reader, and it actually missed many tweets in search result (compare with result on Tweetdeck). So I switched to use FeedDemon, left those feeds into a folder which did not sync with Google Reader. Problem solved!

akstout18

Thank you soooo much for these tips and tools! I'll be linking to this post in my work-in-progress post about how to use Google Reader as a social media monitoring dashboard.

Latest blog post: Today on Ask AK: StumbleUpon, Facebook, Google & Your Questions Answered

thesociable moderator

Thanks @akstout18 let us know when it's up. It's a pity that so many sites have removed (Twitter) RSS feeds, while others have never used them (Google+). Facebook seems to be the only site that has reintroduced them.

Latest blog post: Review: Xobni Gmail app beta – Too powerful for its own good? stats – The Sociable

NikolayIsakov

There is an easier way yet it works only if you subscribed for a twitter channel. Go to your twitter page, right click on it and "View Page Source". Find in text the name of the twitter (comes after #! in the browser string or @ on your content page). The very next string starting from data-user-id="xxx" is the one you need. Copy number from it and post append this string -> ://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/xxx.atom where xxx is your number. This is the direct link to content.

thesociable moderator

Hi @NikolayIsakov we have a page which shows you how to use that method. http://bit.ly/sJCXbG - both RSS feeds seem to be the same though.

Latest blog post: Review: Xobni Gmail app beta – Too powerful for its own good? stats – The Sociable

Arg

Do I need to have a public feed? A public list? I've always kept it all private. I used to be able to get rss into Thunderbird by putting in my twitter rss link and then entering my username and password. Now when I try your feed & list generators and click on your link, I get a new tab in Firefox, which is ... blank. Thanks.

pdscott

Hi @Arg I haven't tested this on private accounts but I would say that you would need a public account. There may be a way of setting it up using the API but this would be more complicated.

Thank you. For some reason Google Reader doesn't like the url but I put the same link into Pulse Reader and it's working brilliantly.

pdscott

Hi @A1 , @JonReedGoesOff had a similar problem below, http://j.mp/pxlJ2Y do any of these work for you?

JonReedGoesOff

Love the idea of what you are doing here....with the custom RSS feed generation for Twitter, however currently the Twitter searches you are generating here are not working for me in Google Reader. I guess Twitter might have moved the goal posts again. If you are successful or if anyone is successful in getting custom RSS searches from this form into Google Reader, please let me know. Thanks!!!

pdscott

@JonReedGoesOff

Thanks Jon,

That sometimes happens (we think it might have something to do with Twitter’s API seeing Google Reader as a client making too many calls).

These tricks sometimes work for us

1) Install Chrome's official RSS reader extension which should allow you to direct the feed to reader.

2) Use Firefox's RSS page to directly open in Reader.

3) Change .rss in the fee URL to .atom (interestingly atom feeds have more entries than rss).

3) Sign into Feedburner and convert the feed --To do this add the feed to Feedburner then click on Optimize > Convert Format Burner (at the bottom). This will let you convert the feed from atom to RSS or vice versa.

4) If all else fails try again in a few hours (possibly when the Twitter calls limit resets) - it might sound like a cop-out but it has worked for us.

Let us know if any of these work for you.

lea724

I'm having the same issue as Jon. I use Firefox, so I tried options 2 and 3 without any success. Google Reader keeps coming back with "The feed being requested cannot be found."

lea724

Well, it seems to be working for me now. I used the .rss URL above, and put it into Google Calendar and suddenly everything worked. Very strange that it wasn't working before, but I'm glad it's working now.

lea724

This is the link I'm trying to get the RSS feed for: http://twitter.com/#!/rabbirubinger

When I put the twitter URL in Feedburner, I get the following error: "The URL does not appear to reference a valid XML file. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 25: The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference."

When I put the .rss URL (http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/378223934.rss) in Feedburner, I get the following error: "Received HTTP error: "Bad Request" while fetching source feed."

Any help is appreciated. :)

pdscott

@lea724 Hi, I'd try it again in a few hours but in the meantime can you convert the feed in Feedburner?Pop us the link, I'll see if I can have a look.

Kate at Rose McGrory Social Media

That Twitter Search RSS feed creator - genuinely brilliant. Took me an hour to find it, but nothing else out there that I know of to do this anything like so easily - THANKS!

pdscott

@Kate at Rose McGrory Social Media Thanks, we've, literally, just done a small update.

Trackbacks

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