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Hello, my name is Marc and I’m a Twitter addict…

Ok, maybe it’s not that bad (really, I can quit anytime I want…) but I am fascinated by it. So much so that after a brief chat one day with @base10 (the @ sign is a Twitter thing) I decided to implement a simple script to update Twitter based on updates to an RSS feed (I swear I’d never heard of TwitterFeed at that point). The idea being that given a “breaking news” RSS feed, I could automatically scan it every so often and send news updates to Twitter.

Using code from my traffic stuff as a base this was a snap to set up. Then came adding support for multiple RSS feeds with multiple Twitter accounts (think “newspaper chain”) and then came support for ATOM feeds in addition to RSS.

What’s been more interesting (to me) is how the different newspapers I’ve set this up for have used it.

The first site to take advantage of Twitter (using my code) was The Fresno Bee. They track their “Updates” section’s RSS feed, so you get just that: news updates. This was pretty much the intended use. Later they added Twitter support to their BeeHive blog.

Next up The Modesto Bee decided to track their “Local News” section so while you get local news updates throughout the day (good), you also get a burst first thing in the morning of their local news print headlines (not so good). Several newspapers do this, regurgitating their daily headlines onto Twitter, and I’m not really a fan of this because to me Twitter is about immediacy, not yesterday’s news.

That said, Modesto was the first site (as far as I know) to update Twitter manually with some breaking traffic updates.

The most recent addition, the Merced Sun-Star did something slick. They created a special channel within their web CMS just for Twitter. This channel creates it’s own RSS feed and therefore becomes a way to update Twitter directly from their CMS. This is very cool, because it allows them to be selective if they so desire. Now they just have to work on that icon.

So yes, we tweet.