Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [31]
Subscribing to RSS feeds
If you want to set up an RSS feed for your direct messages or all your followers’ tweets, simply repeat the steps to get your @replies RSS feed, clicking the link for your direct messages page or Twitter Home screen in Step 2. Now, you can read Twitter from your RSS reader alongside blogs and news outlets, and you don’t have to be logged into any service to stay on top of who’s talking to or about you.
What can you see with a Twitter RSS feed? You can set up a feed for your @replies so you never miss a message, one for your DMs (direct messages), or one for the people whom you follow. After you get your RSS feed reader set up, you just have to look for the feed symbol in your browser’s URL entry field (see Figure 4-2), click it, follow the instructions, and the feed shows up in your feed reader.
Figure 4-2: An RSS button, which varies by browser.
The feed symbol is universal, not unique to Twitter. If you see one on a Web site, that means you can add its content to your feed reader.
To get your @replies RSS feed:
1. Click the Profile link in the upper-right of any Twitter page.
Your Profile page appears.
2. Click the Mentions tab in the right sidebar (which is marked with @username).
Your Mentions page appears.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the orange RSS button.
You can also click the RSS logo in your browser. This logo is usually all the way to the right in the text field where you enter URLs, but it may differ, depending on which browser you use.
Clicking this button (or logo) automatically prompts you to add the feed to the feed address into Google Reader if you have it set up. If you use an application other than Google Reader, you may have to copy and paste the RSS feed’s URL into your reader.
Desktop clients
You can access Twitter through one of the many downloadable desktop applications that third-party developers have created using Twitter’s API. We cover these desktop clients more thoroughly in Chapter 7. Some of the most popular applications are Twhirl, Twitterrific, and TweetDeck (shown in Figure 4-3).
Figure 4-3: You can get your Twitter info by using TweetDeck.
Basically, a Twitter client allows you to use Twitter from your desktop without having a browser open. Many of these clients also offer features that Twitter doesn’t, including the ability to thread tweets and track conversations, create groups, filter content, open simultaneous accounts, delete direct messages, and more.
These services work by talking to Twitter to get the information they need. So, they don’t work if Twitter isn’t working; they rely on it to gather and relay the data you see and use.
TwitterFox
A third-party application created for Twitter is TwitterFox (http://twitterfox.net), which is a plug-in that you can build onto your Mozilla Firefox Web browser. Plug-in just means that the application gets installed right into the browser and runs from there. It won’t run on Safari or Internet Explorer, and you can’t use it if you don’t use Firefox.
Although most plug-ins and add-ons made for Twitter are safe to put on your computer, always be careful any time you install something new. A good way to tell whether an application is okay is to ask your friends on Twitter whether they use it. Most active Twitter users are happy to provide tips and recommendations.
Mozilla approves plug-ins that have been submitted to its developer program. Plug-ins that are proven not to be harmful are endorsed by Mozilla.
Widgets and gadgets
Twitter and other sites offer widgets (or, as Google calls them, gadgets) that let you embed information from a service such as Twitter onto other sites so that you can share Twitter more easily. Sometimes, widgets come in the form of HTML code that you can copy and paste into a MySpace profile or blog template. Other times, they come in the form of an application that you have to install on a social-network platform, such as Facebook. You