Solving development problems  |  About this blog

Archive for the ‘Social networks’ Category

Where is the Twitter user’s RSS button or how to get Twitter user ID?

Strange thing.
RSS button under Twitter user’s profile somehow disappeared.
They wrote a tutorial how to find it but right now we see nothing.

This is a trick we used:

http://api.twitter.com/users/show/[your Twitter username].json

So this is an example call

http://api.twitter.com/users/show/avivo.json

You can find your ID at the bottom (see the orange box):

Publish on Twitter nice and easy from ASP.NET MVC (C#)

How can you automatically post message to Twitter from C#, ASP.NET MVC (from your application)?

First, setup new Twitter application under your Twitter account.

  1. Go to dev.twitter.com and login with your Twitter account
  2. Click on Add Application and enter the all needed data

You will get all all needed secret keys and tokens and they are needed for automatic tweeting.

  • Consumer key: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Consumer secret: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Access Token (oauth_token): xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Access Token Secret (oauth_token_secret): xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now, download Twitterizer API

  1. reference Twitterizer2.dll
  2. Put this code into your application (of course change the location from where you get your secret keys – we have a Settings class)
public void PublishOnTwitter(string message)
{
	OAuthTokens tokens = new OAuthTokens();
	tokens.ConsumerKey = Settings.TwitterConsumerKey;
	tokens.ConsumerSecret = Settings.TwitterConsumerSecret;
	tokens.AccessToken = Settings.TwitterToken;
	tokens.AccessTokenSecret = Settings.TwitterTokenSecret;

	TwitterStatus status = TwitterStatus.Update(tokens, message);
}

And that’s it!
Enjoy!

How to edit or delete your Twitter application?

After you have created your own Twitter App you find out that you made a mistake and added this application under other account then you wanted to, and ynow ou need to delete this newly created and wrongly placed application.

Second scenario is that you want just to edit your application or to change your OAuth keys.

This is a recipe how to do it correctly.

  • Sign into your Twitter account.
  • Click on the “Settings” link.
  • At the Settings page, click on the “Connections” tab.
  • At the Connections page, under “Developers”, click on the “here” link.

  • At the “Applications using Twitter” page, click on your Twitter application name

  • Click on the “Edit Application Settings” button if you’d like to make changes to your Twitter application settings such as changing how your Network Name is displayed in the tweet timestamp. Click on the “Reset Consumer Key/Secret” button if you’d like to reset your Consumer Key/Secret codes.

  • To delete your current Twitter Application, follow steps a through from above. At the bottom of  Twitter Application settings page, click on the “Delete” button.

Twitter vs others

Source of this interesting debate is here.

Slowly but surely, Twitter is taking control of all the key features that make it such a powerful communication medium. Today, it is introducing the Tweet button, a way for Websites to get visitors to share stories and links with one click. Of course, this already exists in various forms, the most popular of which is the Retweet button created by TweetMeme, which is on so many sites (including ours) that it currently generates 750 million impressions a day. Well, that is all very likely going away. “We expect people to switch,” says Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead, “and we support that.”

Twitter is killing TweetMeme’s Retweet button, but with love. It is licensing some of the technology developed by TweetMeme and has a business agreement in place. However, the code that powers the new Tweet button was written from scratch by Twitter. TweetMeme Pro will continue to exist for Websites that want more customized solutions and analytics, but TweetMeme is shifting is business to a new product that has yet to launch called Datasift, which will focus on curating different realtime streams. From Twitter’s perspective, head of product Jason Goldman says, “We think that there is an experience that we can offer that is more integrated with the Twitter accounts people already have.”

In addition to the the ability to Tweet out links, Twitter’s new button also has another feature. It allows the sites which install them to suggest Twitter accounts to follow, perhaps each site’s official account or the accounts of different writers at blogs and news sites.

The Tweet button is just the latest example of Twitter filling holes in its product by poaching the best ideas from the eco-sytem of startups which have built successful businesses on top of Twitter. The same thing happened with bit.ly and short links and when it decided to create its own official mobile apps for the iPhone (by acquiring Tweetie) and Blackberry. Interestingly, the default link shortener the Tweet button uses is Twitter’s own http://t.co, which could prove to be another blow to bit.ly (although it is technically possible for sites that use bit.ly links to keep doing so).

The message this sends out to Twitter developers is that if they create a successful product, Twitter will absorb it. That is not necessarily a bad thing. At least in this case, Twitter worked with the company it will displace to soften the blow. Halstead says it is not really an issue. “The buttons were never our core business, we make our money from selling filtered data – not from buttons. If buttons made you money we would be very rich.” The value is in the data, which he still gets from Twitter via the firehose, which will power his new product.

Written by Avivo

September 10th, 2010 at 1:10 am