Monday, December 14, 2009

Socializing your feed with Twitter

Sometimes you reach across the hedgerow to share with your nearby neighbors. Other times, members of the household move away and yet you can't keep from calling to remind them to wear a hat and such because it's chilly out. Today, we're celebrating acquaintances near-and-far by launching the ability to send your feed to Twitter.

FeedBurner has always been about measuring, managing, and monetizing syndicated content. Our hope is that by providing one application in which you can direct your feed in real-time to a number of endpoints, in this case Twitter in addition to the myriad feed readers, aggregators, and search engines that we have always supported, and then following on with providing analytics for measuring exactly how and where your feed gets distributed across social media, you can make better and more informed decisions about how to monetize your content.

Many of our publishers who have tried our Google Analytics feed item link integration have already noticed that their most popular feed items have been shared many times on Twitter.




We're now taking our distribution and analytics a step further by enabling the ability to automatically publish the feed items that meet your criteria to Twitter, using the Google URL shortener at goo.gl.

To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner's Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter (as always, make sure to ping FeedBurner whenever you update your feed so this process happens as near real-time as possible).

For full details on all Socialize options, see our FeedBurner Help Center topic.





To see the results, take a look at the Twitter account in which you are sending your updates. This blog post, for instance, as well as select blog posts from this and the FeedBurner status blog, will appear from now on at http://twitter.com/feedburner. If Twitter is where you are consuming most of the latest content these days, please follow @feedburner to receive our updates in your favorite Twitter client.

Posted by Steve Olechowski  - Product Manager, on behalf of the Google FeedBurner team
at

81 comments:

  1. AADecember 14, 2009 at 1:02 PM

    Feedburner has effectively lots its mojo. I was using it for Wordpress.com blog for email notification, while I was also promoting its separate RSS feed address. Now that Wordpress.com has it's own email subscription service plus it's own mechanism to shoot Tweets, I see no reason to support Feedburner (I can't figure out what Feedburner provides that Wordpress.com does not).

    ReplyDelete
  2. DarkUFODecember 14, 2009 at 1:16 PM

    Hi,

    Fantastic addition!

    Question
    I have 5 Twitter Accounts for various feeds. How do I tell feedburner to only use the specific Twitter Account for each Feed. Currently it seems that it will send a tweet out to all my Twitter Accounts.

    We need the ability to say which feeds go to which twitter accounts

    eg Feed 1
    I would like this to tweet out to Twitter Accounts 1 and 2

    Feed 2
    Would like this to tweet out to Twitter Accounts 1 and 3

    Feed 3
    Would like this to Tweet out to Twitter account 4

    etc

    Is this possible?

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownDecember 14, 2009 at 1:32 PM

    Bloody briliant! By by twitterfeed..

    ReplyDelete
  4. freitasmDecember 14, 2009 at 2:14 PM

    Looking good... May I suggest a third option for "Additional text" as in "beginning of the post - no additional space"?

    On Twitter I just mark the tweets I want to retweet as "favourite" and use my Favourite RSS feed as a source. It then posts to my Twitter account with "RT @" in front, but Feedburner adds a space - so it looks like "RT @ feedburner" instead of "RT @feedburner".

    Please?

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 14, 2009 at 2:28 PM

    This is pretty cool...

    And, not to pick nits, but it's "hashtag", not "hash tag" (the space makes it look a little too drug-related!).

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 14, 2009 at 4:22 PM

    Thanks so much for this! One thing that has worried me about other services is the downtime they frequently undergo. By moving away from those services, combined with the reliability of goo.gl I feel much more secure. As a Blogger user I appreciate all this integration. Thanks again Google!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Andrew LombardiDecember 14, 2009 at 4:29 PM

    One thing I'm not seeing, is how to remove a Twitter account added in error.

    Am I missing something?

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousDecember 14, 2009 at 6:32 PM

    Really cool.

    I've been dreading setting up a Twitterfeed account because I didn't want to have to remember another password. Now I don't have to.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousDecember 15, 2009 at 7:26 AM

    Huge problem: it repost my entries every single time an update is made. See example here:
    http://www.cloudave.com/link/google-s-feedburner-social-isn-t-quite-ready-back-to-twitterfeed-for-now

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownDecember 15, 2009 at 8:37 AM

    @DarkUFO - right now a feed can only publish out to one twitter account at a time, however, you can easily create copies of your source feed (just burn it again) and have the second copy go to another Twitter account. You can attach multiple Twitter accounts to your Google account.

    @freitasm - thanks for the suggestion - we will look at adding this

    @Andrew Lombardi - you can't remove a Twitter account right now, but you can add an additional Twitter account

    @Zoli Erdos - we're looking at your particular case to see what's special with your particular wordpress installation and feed generator - what you describe is not widespread across all blogging platforms/feed generators

    ReplyDelete
  11. DarkUFO Adsense AccountDecember 15, 2009 at 9:59 AM

    @Steve: I've found a little issue.

    I have multiple feeds and have created new copies so that I can tweet out to multiple twitter accounts.

    Some of these feeds get "stuck". No update for hours despite new posts going through on the blog and also out to the other twitter accounts.

    However, if I edit my Feed in Feedburner and go to Publicize tab and then Socialise and hit the save button again to resave all the posts go out instantly.

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownDecember 15, 2009 at 11:59 AM

    I hooked up my google reader shared items feed to this earlier today. I've shared two items since (both show up in my feedburner feed) and neither has gone to twitter. Is the socialize service down or is there something that I have set up incorrectly?

    My shared item address is -
    http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15289338315609921954

    ReplyDelete
  13. UnknownDecember 15, 2009 at 12:09 PM

    @Danny Riley - this is because the source feed is invalid - http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15289338315609921954
    We're working with the Reader team to figure out why.

    You can usually find this information on the "Troubleshootize" tab.

    @DarkUFO - are you pinging us after you update the feed? If you do not ping us, a feed with a lot of subscribers will get updated more often than one with no subscribers - so we recommend a ping after update - there's a link in the post above on how to do that.

    ReplyDelete
  14. UnknownDecember 15, 2009 at 1:37 PM

    @Zoli Erdos - we found the issue that is causing the multiple posts when feeds are updated. It was a special case in your type of feed when guid=permalink. This has been fixed, and is being pushed to our servers globally, which unfortunately is not a quick process. Expect it to be live in a couple days.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Stuart Ian BurnsDecember 15, 2009 at 1:59 PM

    How about adding Google Shared feeds in with the Link Splicer options?

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousDecember 15, 2009 at 9:17 PM

    @Steve

    I experienced the same thing as Zoli Erdos, if you want another feed to look at. I also have the guid == permalink. Its at http://blog.darkhax.com/feed

    Looking forward to the fix!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Salimane Adjao MoustaphaDecember 15, 2009 at 10:40 PM

    Feedburner does not fetch feeds content at 30mn time interval as stated. And will be possible to set the time shorter ? you could do this in twitterfeed and it does fetch new items at the specified time intervals
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  18. UnknownDecember 16, 2009 at 5:17 AM

    I also have problems with Google Reader Shared Items > Feedburner > Twitter. What's the status of this problem?

    ReplyDelete
  19. UnknownDecember 16, 2009 at 8:30 PM

    @everyone - the problems with duplicate tweets on updates and Reader Shared items not posting should now be fixed. Thanks for helping us find these cases.

    ReplyDelete
  20. MackDecember 20, 2009 at 6:37 AM

    I just wrote my first post after turning on this feature. I wanted "New Blog Post:" at the beginning, and the preview shows it that way. Unfortunately the actual tweet has "New Blog Post:" at the end. :-(

    ReplyDelete
  21. UnknownDecember 21, 2009 at 8:27 AM

    @Mack - we can't seem to recreate this problem - but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. if we can figure out what your feed is, we'll take a look (you can DM it to @feedburner twitter address)

    ReplyDelete
  22. JIDFDecember 26, 2009 at 3:04 AM

    How does one's feedburner subscriber count go from 3,700 to 1,100 in one day?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Tom KirkpatrickDecember 26, 2009 at 2:02 PM

    Hi -

    I have been working with Franklin Tse to move subscribers from an old
    feed to a new feed.

    The old feed is deleted with a 30-day redirect, but my subscribers
    have not been
    moved.

    Franklin has not been answering my emails for several weeks. The old
    feed (and the subscriber list) will soon be deleted. My account is
    [email address].

    New feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/springfield1978/kcKg

    Please help!

    Tom K.

    ReplyDelete
  24. GonzagueDecember 28, 2009 at 2:35 AM

    Hi guys

    Lots of people seem to have this problem :

    - Posting from WordPress with the Twitter thingie configured on FeedBurner
    - WordPress pings Feedburner which tweets
    - User clicks the link and lands on : http://twitpic.com/uxo14 this kind of pages and a minute later it works without making any change to our settings

    Any ideas?

    ReplyDelete
  25. MarkusDecember 28, 2009 at 6:27 AM

    I have a problem, too

    the short urls are nor redirecting to the url of the news
    you can check it here
    http://twitter.com/blurayforum

    how can I chnage this?

    ReplyDelete
  26. AnonymousDecember 28, 2009 at 6:49 AM

    Getting a "404" whenever I try to activate it..

    ReplyDelete
  27. UnknownDecember 28, 2009 at 8:58 PM

    @Gonzague - we're looking into this and trying to replicate it.

    ReplyDelete
  28. GonzagueDecember 29, 2009 at 3:04 AM

    Thank you very much Steve. If you need it, I can gather the IDs of a few people experiencing this

    ReplyDelete
  29. Tom KirkpatrickJanuary 2, 2010 at 8:49 AM

    Steve Olechowski -

    How does someone actually get support from a real person at Feedburner?

    To put it politely, the Feedburner Help Group is essentially a sham where lots of struggling customers ask lots of questions....but very very few actual answers are provided.

    Take a look for yourself. This is the only outlet for support that people have!

    My blog subscriber list was mis-handled and perhaps deleted by Feedburner staff.... and I cannot get anyone to return my emails.

    All the good work on feature improvement will get you nowhere if you can't simply help people with questions.

    Thank you,

    Tom Kirkpatrick
    tomkirk23@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  30. soepGARNAALJanuary 5, 2010 at 1:14 AM

    The ping feature is lame.. what about a integration with google sitemaps ping?

    ReplyDelete
  31. UnknownJanuary 5, 2010 at 5:09 AM

    I don't even see a Socialize tab on my account

    ReplyDelete
  32. UnknownJanuary 5, 2010 at 3:22 PM

    Working with new twitter account and feed located here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/copperheads twitter account here: http://twitter.com/copperheadwc and only the top item posted to twitter rather than all the new items, which makes me worry that going forward only one item will post each time, is this expected behavior?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Zane PerryJanuary 6, 2010 at 9:16 PM

    This is great and all but creating this feater leaves a larger question. Why do you not apply the goog.le shortener in the RSS feed item.link field??? Right now I import my blog entries to tumblr which is imported into facebook. Unfortunately the tumblr facebook app posts the item.link url under the title. This means that the insanely long url of http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ZanePerryJr/~3/mWp9SFtDtNA/ is posted on my facebook page. Yes, this is a defect of the tumblr facebook application (and I have emailed them as well) but it just makes sense to me that google would use the shortened url in place of the long url everywhere. That to me would be more logical. I am working on a yahoo tube to fix this but it is taking longer then I thought. I was excited when I saw the goog.le url shortener. Maybe soon ;)

    ReplyDelete
  34. UnknownJanuary 10, 2010 at 9:00 PM

    Whomever posted the "Sweep the Leg, Johnny!" entry that found it's way to the screenshot is my new best friend.

    ReplyDelete
  35. churwynJanuary 11, 2010 at 4:30 AM

    Wow, That's another good reason to tweet..!

    ReplyDelete
  36. Algarve Tour GuideJanuary 12, 2010 at 8:17 AM

    How to integrat multiples feeds in one feed?
    other Question: I have some problems to connect whith google frien connect. can you chek if there is anythin wrong

    ReplyDelete
  37. UnknownJanuary 13, 2010 at 6:04 AM

    Great feature! I'd like to tweet my shared Google Reader items in this way, but the note I add to those items is preceded by "Shared by [my name]", which strikes me as way too many characters to add to a tweet. Would love to have more control over exactly what gets pushed to Twitter other than just Title/Body. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  38. iHingJanuary 13, 2010 at 6:00 PM

    This is a great feature. Now I do not need to Tweet each of my icrazee Mac blog posts manually. FeedBurner does this for me automatically.

    One thing though I would like to see the format of the tweet as Blog Title: Post Title. Example: The iCrazee Mac Blog: Dell PC Laptop vs MacBook Pro.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Jiyugaoka Haikuers ClubJanuary 15, 2010 at 10:27 PM

    thank you for your good service. I am using the "Create hash tags from item categories" function.
    But it reject underscore"_". It is necessary for Japanese hash tags.
    If you can, please change the setting of the function.

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Serr8dJanuary 17, 2010 at 8:01 AM

    If you're having problems with feeds to twitter, simply create a bit.ly account, sign in and tweet your posts individually and immediately. You can then 'customize' the twitter message, add hashtags if necessary, AND it's much more personalized than a robot-created tweet.

    I usually won't click on a robot-created, twittered URL.

    ReplyDelete
  41. UnknownJanuary 18, 2010 at 5:41 AM

    Thanks so much for this! One thing that has worried me about other services is the downtime they frequently undergo. By moving away from those services, combined with the reliability of goo.gl I feel much more secure. As a Blogger user I appreciate all this integration. Thanks again Google!

    ReplyDelete
  42. CodulRosuJanuary 19, 2010 at 4:11 PM

    A prophecy is the message that has been communicated to a prophet which the prophet then communicates to others. In general, this message can involve divine ...

    ReplyDelete
  43. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2010 at 1:20 PM

    Thanks! One thing that has worried me about other services is the downtime they frequently undergo.

    ReplyDelete
  44. UnknownJanuary 26, 2010 at 12:06 PM

    When I click on the Pingshot option, I do not get an aggregate selection option. I also do not get the scroll down menu in which I can pick other sources to ping. Could anyone explain why I do not have that option? It allows me to activate the feature but nothing more.

    ReplyDelete
  45. lidia.amigaJanuary 28, 2010 at 9:33 AM

    Thanks again Google!

    Lidia

    ReplyDelete
  46. AnonymousJanuary 29, 2010 at 8:37 AM

    I have a problem, too

    the short urls are nor redirecting to the url of the news

    What should I make?

    ReplyDelete
  47. RichardFebruary 3, 2010 at 2:50 PM

    Hi,

    I just started using the auto posting to twitter from my feed service. It seems to work for the most part, but I'm noticing that it is skipping articles in the feed.

    It'll post several articles, skip a couple, and then continue to post more recent articles.

    I've checked feedmedic and see that it is reporting at various times:

    "Your server is sending us some non-XML data. This is usually caused by your blogging platform or server generating an error page that is not in a valid feed format (usually it is plain-text, or HTML). Please confirm that your source feed is working properly."

    I go to validate my feed and it always comes out as a valid atom feed. So there is nothing for me to fix...

    After the errors in feedmedic, it will show an ALL CLEAR message from the same feed 10 minutes later, even though the feed has not been updated within those 10 minutes.

    Not sure what is happening there, but I would think that the service, when it succesfully parses the feed, should pick up any article it has not already tweeted, ie. when it had a problem reading the feed previously.

    Is this not how the service works?

    Thanks,
    Rich

    ReplyDelete
  48. Herria BaturikFebruary 4, 2010 at 5:43 AM

    I do not undertand english so well us you, that so much thank for the information and the work all of you done.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Pradeep MaharjanFebruary 10, 2010 at 5:03 PM

    my articles are not updating in twitter. But i can see the updated list in my feed list. My feed is http://peopleboat.com/blog/index.php?format=feed&type=rss


    and feedburnder address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/peopleboat/KIbp

    while i ping it says following error
    Your Ping resulted in an Error "We were unable to process your ping. You must ping with a URL that exactly matches the channel link (RSS) or alternate link (Atom) in your top level feed element pointing back to your website (e.g http://myblog.blogspot.com/), or use your feed URL (e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/myuri)."

    ReplyDelete
  50. DMFebruary 14, 2010 at 6:52 AM

    @ Arif
    How about the fact the Feedburner is used by millions of readers worldwide, and as such it is a widely recognised, and therefore FAMILIAR feeder?

    ReplyDelete
  51. UnknownFebruary 25, 2010 at 3:42 AM

    It's not working lately.

    I run 4 feeds and have 4 linked twitter accouts (one personal and three work-related) and neither of them is working right now.

    All the best. Dena Flows

    ReplyDelete
  52. paul baileyMarch 6, 2010 at 4:17 PM

    along those lines i was hoping that your the feedburner link splicer would support the shared items in the google reader. this would make a lot of sense as a replacement for delicous, and a way to keep the comments organized in the social media universe.

    any plans to do this?

    thanks,

    paul

    ReplyDelete
  53. HfetishMarch 9, 2010 at 10:33 AM

    Am I the only one who can't find the publicize tab anywhere?

    ReplyDelete
  54. http://interior4homes.blogspot.com/March 10, 2010 at 2:02 AM

    is anyone having a problem with feeds, my feeds are not going on twitter, l think it could be the html being blocked?.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Agung WisesoMarch 14, 2010 at 12:51 AM

    feedburner is yhe best

    ReplyDelete
  56. AnonymousMarch 17, 2010 at 8:26 AM

    Stopped working for me last week. :(

    Deactivation/re-activation do not help.

    Does not seem to have a way to remove/re-add twitter account.

    What do I do?

    Dmitry

    ReplyDelete
  57. UnknownMarch 17, 2010 at 8:34 AM

    @dmitrysotnikov

    Simply re-add your twitter account and go through the auth process again with twitter. Yes, just add the twitter account again from the socialize page and press "Save".

    This is an issue where OAuth tokens expire between Google and Twitter. It has been fixed but the fix is not in production yet.

    ReplyDelete
  58. cuaryosMarch 21, 2010 at 11:20 PM

    i don't know what is wrong, i am waiting for couple day but no update in my twitter. it's means no working. by the way thank...

    ReplyDelete
  59. NickMarch 24, 2010 at 1:27 AM

    Awesome Feature And very easy to handle.
    Thanks.
    Emergency preparedness supplies

    ReplyDelete
  60. AnonymousMarch 28, 2010 at 9:39 PM

    i'm seeking help as to how i can use feedburner with wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
  61. AnonymousApril 3, 2010 at 6:30 AM

    When can we expect to see a Publicize feature for Facebook?

    ReplyDelete
  62. mkg.durgapurApril 4, 2010 at 4:11 AM

    I have done! Nice works feedburner!

    ReplyDelete
  63. UnknownApril 29, 2010 at 11:54 PM

    Feedburner keeps losing its Twitter authorizations for my feeds. Why?

    ReplyDelete
  64. UnknownMay 20, 2010 at 3:41 AM

    When it would be fully functional???? I am facing problems like my posting on twitter automatically gets off.

    ReplyDelete
  65. AnonymousMay 20, 2010 at 4:17 AM

    sorry for my english.. followers on twitter accounted as feedburner's readers? analogously FriendFeed subscribers.

    ReplyDelete
  66. AuntypizzaMay 28, 2010 at 10:36 PM

    Same problem as others - I added the wrong Twitter Account and can't for the life f me find where to correct it?

    It will have to stay as "unactivated" - ridiculous that I am going round in circles looking for an anser - half an hour already . . . . . . grrrrrrrrr

    ReplyDelete
  67. Jon LaneJune 3, 2010 at 3:47 AM

    Stopped working for me too, at least at two out of three of my such accounts. The working feed is webpage > Feedburner > Twitter.

    The two that do not work are both in the same second account. One is WP and the other vBulletin. The WP > Feedburner feed works erratically into Facebook too, so I temporarily bypassed it and fed straight through from the source and that's back up and running.

    Yes, I've checked all URLs and repinged half a dozen times. No errors. I added a second Google > Twitter authorization. Still nothing.

    Not sure what to do but watch and wait.

    ReplyDelete
  68. AnonymousJune 4, 2010 at 8:46 PM

    Somebody above who uses wordpress.com says feedburner is useless to him now that wordpress offers internal email subscription and twitter auto post...

    but that's not necessarily tru...feedburner is still useful to some of us wordpress.com users who wish to have multiple feeds for our blog (eg. whole posts vs. summaries...i also use google reader to aggregate content i follow, bundle and burn into feed on feedburner, then redirect back to my blog as a supplemental service)

    stickyfeet
    http://trivcap.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
  69. UnknownJuly 7, 2010 at 1:28 PM

    it shows "server error" anytime i trying to add twitter account to feed

    ReplyDelete
  70. donkissotesJuly 7, 2010 at 3:15 PM

    great feedburner!!
    thank you v much for this

    ReplyDelete
  71. alexJuly 7, 2010 at 3:57 PM

    Server 500 error occurs every time i'm trying add twitter account to feedburner. please fix it!

    ReplyDelete
  72. UnknownJuly 8, 2010 at 3:06 AM

    >it shows "server error" anytime i >trying to add twitter account to feed

    I can second that. It's not possible to add twitter accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  73. MarilisaJuly 8, 2010 at 1:43 PM

    Great idea, but it doesn't work. Initially it was updating my Twitter, but now it doesn't work. Please fix- this is a great service, especially with the auto hashtag service.

    ReplyDelete
  74. UnknownJuly 9, 2010 at 7:52 AM

    @Lars try again now

    http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2010/07/fix-applied-for-setting-up-socialize.html

    ReplyDelete
  75. UnknownJuly 14, 2010 at 2:14 AM

    still the same for me..

    on the new window where twitter appears a message will show after pressing accept button: "unable to connect..."

    tried it on opera and chrome (latest versions) still the same...

    ReplyDelete
  76. LIS LinksAugust 18, 2010 at 2:57 AM

    It has a bug.
    I have a feedburner account with different feed in them, when I link two twitter account with two different feed through socialize tab, the both twitter account was stop updating. Now even i cannot delete my one of the twitter account from the socialize tab. Please do fix this problem.

    ReplyDelete
  77. budi bartimSeptember 6, 2010 at 7:04 AM

    why my feed usualy error?

    ReplyDelete
  78. AnonymousOctober 13, 2010 at 7:47 AM

    Hi, would be nice to use, but I cannot add a twitter account. The error message being (the well known) server error.

    ReplyDelete
  79. KveldesOctober 21, 2010 at 10:03 AM

    Hello very very nice feature !
    But i need a little help.
    At the begging it works, but now it does not update my twitter,why this happening?
    Can u help me to solve this problem?
    I try to reputing the twitter account and push the allow access of it but nothing happen.

    ReplyDelete
  80. UnknownJuly 24, 2012 at 8:18 PM

    Socializing your feed with Twitter is a great way to reech the public. FeedBurner is a great tool .

    ReplyDelete
  81. UnknownJuly 24, 2012 at 8:30 PM

    FeedBurner is a socialize network marketing places.

    ReplyDelete

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