When Twitter went from 140 to 280 chars, there was an opportunity to re-think the connection between Twitter and RSS. #
280 chars is enough to communicate a few thoughts, with optional room for a title. #
Also, the integration of a thread-writing tool in Twitter made it easier to chain tweets together, to form a full document. #
This is, imho, enough to make RSS a viable connector between Twitter and the rest of the world. This is significant because RSS is a simpler API than Twitter's API. It will open Twitter up to more applications#
As an experiment I wrote a Node.js service that periodically reads my tweet stream and publishes an RSS feed. #
Titles. I can put a title on a tweet with Markdown-ish syntax. #
Unlimited length posts. RSS has no limit on document length. With threads, neither does Twitter. So I'll just roll up threads into a single RSS item. I haven't implemented this yet.#
Links. My plan is to use Markdown syntax for links. It's right there. Why not use it. Again, not implemented yet. #
Other RSS concepts such as pubDate and guid are all easily synthesized from the metadata Twitter provides through its API.#
Styling. Why not allow *any* Markdown in tweets, properly interpreted for the RSS item representing the tweet. #
The next step is to create a feed viewer for RSS feeds that emanate from Twitter, so we can easily view and debug the code that does the translation, and then start adding more features. #
These feeds will work with all RSS-compatible feed readers that can handle items without titles (which is redundant btw, RSS titles have always been optional).#
Interestingly, RSS gets a fresh start, a new way of generating feeds from an editing environment miliions of people use. Twitter wins because its API is more broadly applicable, and it can immediately start fostering a decentralized community. It should happen quickly. We've been down this road before. And we can do all this with the existing Twitter API. Important point. No waiting. #
The last time the combination of Twitter and RSS was seriously considered was when Twitter itself supplied an RSS feed. But that was in the time of 140 chars, with no thread tool, and further, Twitter duplicated the text of the tweet in the title and description elements of each RSS item. The dominant RSS reader of the day, Google Reader, made no special allowance, so it repeated the text in their user interface, and it was ugly and distracting, didn't fit in with the other feeds people were reading. #
I also did a tweet-to-RSS service. Instead of duplicating the tweet in the title and description elements, I omitted the title, which is optional in RSS 2.0, but Google Reader didn't handle RSS items without titles. So that was a dead-end too.#
Google Reader is long gone and Twitter no longer has RSS feeds. #
PS: A thread with the new style of tweet developing.#
Last update: Monday February 14, 2022; 5:59 PM EST.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)