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:

https://twitter.com/sengineland

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

https://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:

https://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.