Categories: Social Media

Twitter hasn’t killed RSS just yet, here’s how to find your Twitter feed RSS url

Since redesigning its site Twitter has been accused of killing its previously open ecosystem.  The focus of the accusations comes from Twitter’s removal of RSS feeds on each user’s profile.  Twitter has said this is a design glitch that will be fixed but until that happens, if it ever will, there still are ways to get access a Twitter user’s RSS feed.

Credit: Twitter

Previously if you visited a Twitter profile, such as http://twitter.com/thesociable, you could subscribe to a feed of that account’s tweets and favourite’d messages. Now Twitter only gives access to the user’s favourite’d messages.  So, what do you do if you want to subscribe to that user’s tweets?

[Update, 2011-05-05: We’ve added a post to show you how to get the RSS feed for a Twitter List here.]

Well, there are two ways to access Twitter RSS feeds.

The first method is the easiest, if you visit Twitter’s search page and search for a Twitter user’s handler, such as @thesociable, you can subscribe to an RSS for that search term (there is a link to the RSS feed on the top right of the page). Twitter has since removed this method, although you can still generate an RSS feed for a search term, although it’s a bit complicated.

For more information about finding Twitter RSS/Atom links;

With the second method if you want to subscribe directly to a user’s Twitter feed you need to do a small (but easy) bit of hacking.  A standard Twitter user’s RSS feed looks like this; http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/XXX.rss

The XXX is an ID unique to each Twitter account.  To get your, or any Twitter user’s, RSS URL you should replace the XXX with their ID number.

There are a number of sites that can show you a user’s id, such as idfromuser.com, which will reveal a user’s ID from their Twitter username.  So, using this the Sociable’s Twitter url is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/174451720.rss.

If, on the off chance, you want to subscribe to Justin Bieber’s RSS feed (and why wouldn’t you…) you can use this address http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/27260086.rss.

You can then subscribe to these feeds using your favourite RSS client such as Google Reader or Firefox.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain is marketing and sales head at Octal Info Solution, a leading iPhone app development company and offering platform to hire Android app developers for your own app development project. He is available to connect on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

View Comments

Recent Posts

‘Digital disinformation undermines trust in climate & health authorities’: WHO Pan European Commission on Climate & Health

The PECCH is an attempt to persuade us into believing that climate & health policies…

16 hours ago

WEF ‘Summer Davos’ in China to tackle transhumanism, AI & One Health agendas

The program agenda for the World Economic Forum's (WEF) 16th Annual Meeting of the New…

4 days ago

10 design and architecture writers to put on your radar this year

It’s easy to get caught up in the visuals—perfectly styled rooms, dramatic before-and-afters, bold architectural…

5 days ago

Elon Musk Turns News Into a Bet — Is This the Future of Honest Media?

Polymarket and xAI have created a feedback loop where headlines aren’t written - they’re traded.…

6 days ago

10 thoughtful gifts for the man who says he wants nothing, but deserves everything: Dad.

Father’s Day is just around the corner, and so is the age-old question: what do…

6 days ago

Why software release speeds are being throttled 

As the race for innovation continues, experts have flagged that how well an enterprise is…

6 days ago