Follow Search Engine Land On Twitter

Want to get updated about news from Search Engine Land via Twitter? We have an account there, sengineland. Why not searchengineland? Too long a username, sadly. Anyway, visit that page, and if you’re logged in, use the "add sengineland" link in the white "Actions" box on the right-hand side of the page. Now you’ll get Twitters when we post a new story.

I’ve also added two Twitter options to the FeedFlares we show from FeedBurner below our stories. The first says "Twit This!" and allows you to Twitter any story you’ve read to others who follow you on Twitter, if you have a Twit This! account. Want to use it yourself with FeedBurner? Get the code here, and background info here. Need an alternative if you don’t use FeedFlares? The Twit This! site provides buttons.

The second says "Follow Us On Twitter." This just takes you directly to our profile page on Twitter. If you want to use the code yourself, you’ll find it here. Unfortunately, there’s no way to yet automatically integrate this into something FeedBurner can use for everyone, as I did with the FeedFlare I made for StumbleUpon.

FeedBurner might be able to solve this by allowing you to enter your Twitter profile as part of a FeedBurner account setting. If that’s done, then a FeedFlare that automatically inserts the right profile name would work. But for now, you’ll need to take my code, replace the unique twitter URL for Search Engine Land with your own, then upload that somewhere and give FeedBurner the URL.

I’d like to see something even better happen, a way to have a link that automatically lets those clicking on it add you as a friend. But there’s an issue with Twitter that prevents this.

You see, everyone on Twitter has a unique ID number. You can find this you go to someone’s "Friends" page. For example, go to the sengineland profile page here:

http://twitter.com/sengineland

Now click on the "Friends" link in on the right-hand side of the page. The URL will look like this:

http://twitter.com/friends/index/1059801

That number in bold is our unique ID. You see this ID if you try to add someone as a friend. The Add URL for us looks like this:

http://twitter.com/friendships/create/1059801

Ideally, you should be able to have a link like Follow Us On Twitter that uses this Add URL so someone who is logged in could automatically add you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Clicking on that URL fails regardless if I’m logged in or out of Twitter. So here’s hoping they’ll solve that. Yes, they do offer badges. But it’s silly to have a badge on a site that simply tells you the latest stories that site has posted. You can see those on the site itself. Instead, a "Follow Me On Twitter" feature would be much better.