How to Import Your Twitter Contacts to Friend Feed

I’ve commented before that Friend Feed makes for a really sweet Twitter client because of the way it threads replies and how easy it is to reply to another user. The only problem is trying to find all of your Twitter contacts on Friend Feed.

I’ve written a program that uses Google’s social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.

It keeps track of who it has added over time. If you unsubscribe from someone using the web interface, they won’t be added again by the program.

Delete It – Tips for Managing Information Overload

We’re deep into the beginning of the Information Age, as you can see from the propagation of information aggregators like Google Reader and the meta-aggregators like Friend Feed. There’s only one tip for handling information saturation that has any success: delete it.

Greasemonkey Scripts: Friend Feed Twitter Client and Remove Visited Links

”Friend Feed” week seems to be continuing at IDT. But don’t worry, there’s a team of trained attack Bonobo monkeys prepared to take me into a dark alley and beat me up and make me suffer if I don’t stop talking about Friend Feed. What can I say? This is what it looks like when a web app gets people excited. I’ve put together two more Greasemonkey scripts to add features I want in Friend Feed.

Blog Tip: Creating a Blog Maintenance Start Page with Netvibes

In Blogger GTD, Leo mentioned that it was a good idea to have one inbox for all your blogging related notifications. I hate cluttering in my inbox, but I do agree that it makes sense to have a single point of reference rather to spend 5 minutes checking some information in one place and then spend 5 minutes checking information in another place. As Skelliewag says, those 5 minutes add up over the course of a day and by the end of it you’ve wasted an hour.

Directing everything to my inbox would never work for me, but it is possible to have a single start page for all your blog maintenance activities using Netvibes. If you aren’t familiar with Netvibes it is a combination of an RSS feed aggregator and a widget platform. It is analogous to iGoogle (but works better). In simple terms Netvibes lets you put lots of information in one place and look at information from several web pages on a single page.

If you’ve never tried it out before then please visit http://netvibes.com — they let you play around with a default page even if you don’t have an account.

This is what I put on my blog maintenance start page. Replace internetducttape.com or engtech.wordpress.com with your blog URL.

Column 1: Comment Administration and Social Site Monitoring

The first column is for things that I want to respond quickly to — comments and checking to see if my site is submitted to Digg or Reddit.

Box #1: Comments RSS feed: http://internetducttape.com/comments/feed

Or you could use my WordPress Comment Extractor / WordPress Trackback Extractor to get only the comments or only the trackbacks.

Box #2: Shortcuts to WordPress administration activities using the Netvibes Bookmarks widget.

Bookmarks: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Bookmarks

I add the following bookmarks:

• Moderate Comments: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
  (also see WordPress Comment Ninja)
• Moderate Akismet Spam: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?page=akismet-admin
  (also see Akismet Auntie Spam)
• Manage Posts: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit.php
• Manage Pages: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-pages.php
• Layout Sidebar Widgets: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php
• Layout Edit CSS: https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=editcss

Box #3: Social Site Submission Watchdog is a custom Yahoo Pipe I created.

Click on this link then

• change your blog URL
• click on Run Pipe
• copy the RSS link to Netvibes

Column 2: Blog Stats

It’s a bad idea to check your blog stats multiple times a day, but is it so bad if you’re also checking blog comments, emails and instant messages at the same time?

Box #1: This will only work for WordPress.com bloggers, which is too bad because it’s a great way to check stats at a glance.

WordPress.com Mobile Widget: http://gamespotting.net/wordpressnetvibes.html

Box #2: Technorati Rank from RSS. Another custom Yahoo Pipe. This one is a little more complicated to install because you’ll need your Technorati API key.

Click on this link then

• change your blog URL
• find your Technorati API key and cut-and-paste it
• click on Run Pipe
• copy the RSS link to Netvibes

Box #3: Filtered Blog Reactions from Technorati. This is another custom Yahoo Pipe. It shows the blog URL as the title and links to the front page instead of directly to the post.

Click on this link then

• change your blog URL
• click on Run Pipe
• copy the RSS link to Netvibes

You could use this RSS feed instead: http://feeds.technorati.com/search/internetducttape.com

Column 3: Direct Communication

I use the second tab as a way to keep a quick check on how I stay in contact with other bloggers — through Gmail and Twitter.

Box #1: Gmail: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Gmail

I use a dedicated Gmail account for blogging — I don’t receive any personal or work related email with that account.

Box #2: Twitter Replies RSS feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.rss

This shows some of the power of Netvibes — you can view password protected RSS feeds.

Box #3: Twitter: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Twitter

Create Your Own Blog Maintenance Start Page

This gives you a few ideas of how I use the service, but the possibilities are endless.

For instance there is a Facebook widget: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Facebook

Not to mention several widgets that let you directly embed a web page. Using those generic modules you can embed Google Reader into Netvibes and other crazy stuff like that.

What are you going to put on your blog maintenance start page?

Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS

RSS is one of the most useful tools out there for moving information around on the web. Recently the concept of “micro-blogging” status updates has become very popular with applications like Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. The only problem is that it is a pain to update many sites at the same time. It is better to pick one and broadcast RSS to the others. I’m going to show you how to broadcast your Facebook status to Twitter.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Twitter Facebook App now lets you control your Facebook status from Twitter. This tip lets you posts your Facebook status in Twitter. Using them together is a very bad idea.

How to Find the RSS Feed for Your Facebook Status

This is actually the hardest part.

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on Profile tab
3. Under the Mini-Feed heading click on See All
4. Click on Status Stories from the right hand column
5. Right click on My Status and copy the link

Filtering Your Status with Yahoo Pipes

I’ve put together a Yahoo Pipe that filters your status. This isn’t necessary, but it makes the status updates look a little bit better in other applications like Twitter. It removes your name, and changes the link to go to your profile instead of the individual status. Feel free to clone it and tweak it some more.

Eric is washing his cat.

becomes

is washing his cat (from Facebook status).

and the feed link is set to your Facebook profile.

1. Go to this Yahoo Pipe
2. Copy your Facebook status RSS feed
3. Click Run Pipe
4. Click on Subscribe
5. Right click on Get as RSS and copy link

You can now put this filter RSS into TwitterFeed, your blog sidebar, etc.

Special Thanks

• This Yahoo Pipe gave me the idea for filtering Facebook status
• Michael Pick for his instructions on how to find your Facebook RSS feed (he’s the source of the screenshot above)

Related Posts

• List of my Yahoo Pipes for bloggers
• Tweaking Facebook Privacy settings and Facebook privacy settings for applications
• Broadcasting RSS feeds with TwitterBot (pre TwitterFeed)

Be My Friend (on social network sites)

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand (or *gasp* you aren’t obsessed with Internet culture), then you’ve noticed that we’re seeing more and more web service startups over the past few years. Last year I flamed the Bubble 2.0 soundly in “Web Too.Many.” Earlier this year I tried to get an idea of what websites people actually use by starting the What’s Your Web 2.0? meme.I think I’m past breaking when it comes to my attention span and the number of services that I use. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some I heartily recommend. If you use some of these services as well, then please go ahead and “friend” me. And yes, there is a Facebook account in the list.

Active

• Facebook – I have separate profiles for blog friends and real friends
• Del.icio.us – bookmarking, blogging
• Last.fm – music discovery, sharing music with friends
• StumbleUpon – voting/sharing
• Digg – voting/sharing
• Reddit – voting/sharing
• WordPress – blogging
• Gmail – email

Software Hosting

• Google Code Hosting – hosting software projects
• Yahoo Pipes – creating RSS feed filters
• Userscripts.org – all of my greasemonkey scripts

Autopilot

• Twitter – sharing, republishing
• Tumblr – aggregating my online presence
• Jaiku – sharing, republishing

Deadpool

These are sites that I used to use often, but I’ve given up on:

• MyBlogLog – too much spam
• Flickr – it’s easier to share photos with friends on Facebook
• RottenTomatoes – it’s easier to share movie reviews with friends on Facebook
• Technorati – never indexes me properly
• Blogcritics – got some books, but they aren’t a very good source of traffic
• LinkedIn – until the next time I’m looking for work
• … more than I can possibly remember.

What got me thinking about this is trying out Pownce for the first time and seeing how horrible it is at re-discovering my friends.

I just sent out some invites to Kevin Rose’s Pownce to my FeedBurner subscribers. (Thanks for hooking me up, Adam)

Pownce First Impression

I’ve seen other complaints that the biggest problem of Pownce is “what do I do with it?” It’s probably the most powerful web-based instant messaging client out there.

I was very surprised that they Pownce doesn’t have an “import contacts from address book” feature. That is rapidly becoming the only way to easily import the list of your friends from one web app to another. I was trying out Blue Swarm the other day and they are using a very slick widget from Plaxo that does easy address book imports. All web startups should use this, since email address contacts are the only universal data format for identifying your friends on the web.

This is a perfect example of why the Facebook application experience is so powerful… signing up and maintaining a user account is the major barrier that prevents most web startups from gaining a massive user base. “Social” web sites have an even bigger barrier in that you have to move or re-find your network. Facebook apps allow for any application to have the same user account and social network.

Obviously I think it would be pretty awesome if that Plaxo contact importer also supported Facebook as well as Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.

What Others Have to Say

Scoble: “I see many of the same people in my friends list on Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, and now Pownce. Pownce is growing faster than the other ones right now, though. 728 people have already added me on Pownce. I can’t take many more social networks.“

Memoirs of a Bystander: “My question is this: Is there any value actually garnered from adding an obscenely large amount of random people as your friend on various social sites? Honestly, if a social networking site it meant to enhance you life through discovery of new interests, music, recommendations, etc…, is that easily done by wading through thousands of people?”

Mashable: “And it is this: on Pownce, you can send a message, or a file, or a song, or an event, to one person; or three of your friends; or only your family; or everyone.”

SocialHam: “Now more than ever Email seems to becoming a dead medium so can micro blogging sites fill in the gaps?”

JetPacked: “Can’t decide between pownce and twitter? This should help. Here’s how to post your pownces to twitter.”

Daily Grumble: “Social networking is a very difficult area for a new service to break into. How on earth are you going to persuade users of other, more established social networks to come to your service?”

Greg Verdino: “Are social media mavens living inside a bubble of our own making, artificially inflating the impact that most of these nascent technologies are having on the population in general, and ultimately getting our companies and our clients riled up over something that will, over time, turn out to be, well um, nothing?”

Blowing Twitters out of proportion

StumbleUpon and Tumblr are both interesting forms of micro-blogging, but I’ve been getting more into Twitter. Twitter lets me surf other people’s streams of thought (like a super micro-blog-lite with 140 characters or less per entry). You view all of the your friends/contacts “tweets” as a stream. What’s funny is when completely unrelated tweets can appear connected because of the random positioning of technology.

Broadcasting RSS Feeds with Twitterbot in Less Than 5 Minutes

Everyone is all atwitter about the Twitter web service. It’s a web-based broadcast instant messaging application where you can send updates by email or by SMS mobile. It has a limitation of 140 characters and is a lot like how people have always used their instant messenger away status (or their Facebook status). Like all public web communication people will lose their jobs and destroy relationships over Twitter before they realize that it’s all public, it’s all archived, and it’s all searchable (but you can restrict messages to only go to friends).

I’m not going to use Twitter to start posting all of the trivialities of my life, but I *am* interested in using it to broadcast my blog posts, my del.icio.us bookmarks, and the occasional aside (you can friend me here). Here is how you can do something similar using a program called Twitterbot by R. Tyler Ballance at the Unethical Blogger.

By the end of this guide you’ll have a program up and running that will download RSS feeds and broadcast them over your Twitter account.