Post and Read via Twitter API
The other day I talked about micro-blogging and mega-blogging and shared my view that new forms of social media, including micro-blogging, are complementary to blogging. We’ve seen ongoing growth at WordPress.com as people started using Twitter, and we expect that to continue.
Of course one of the coolest things about Twitter right now is the client applications, particularly the mobile/iPhone ones. I use Tweetie 2 on my iPhone every day. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get all your blog subscriptions and post to your WordPress.com blog from apps like Tweetie? Well here’s an early Christmas present…
We’ve enabled posting to and reading of WordPress.com blogs via the Twitter API. Any app that allows you to set a custom API URL will work. This project came out of our Quebec meetup and was developed by Team 55 (Andy, Terry, and Raphael).
For this walkthrough we’ll use Tweetie 2. To get started, launch Tweetie 2 and click the “Accounts” button. Then press the “+” button to add your WordPress.com account. Enter your WordPress.com username and password, and click on the gear icon under the password field.
For API Root, enter: https://twitter-api.wordpress.com/ and then click the Add Account button. (No search API… yet!) Save this account and after your information is verified you can start posting to your WordPress.com blog from Tweetie 2. (There’s more detailed info about setting up your WordPress.com profile to work with the Twitter API in our Support doc.)
Here’s what it looks like when I read WordPress.com blogs I’ve subscribed to in Tweetie.
You can write a status update and post to your WordPress.com blog and also have it displayed in the blog reading view.
If you’ve enabled geotagging for your posts, the geolocation data gets exposed as well. You can change what blog the posts go to under your profile.
APIs are Biz Dev 2.0, as Caterina Fake put it, our ability to connect Tweetie 2 to WordPress.com proves this out. We didn’t have to talk to Loren Brichter because he built custom API support into Tweetie 2 — thanks Loren! (As an aside, I’d love to see custom API support added to TweetDeck and Seesmic, my two favorite desktop Twitter clients.)
There are still some rough spots around the edges but the core posting and reading bits of the API are solid and the rest is coming soon. I see the Twitter API as one of the new de facto standards that as many applications should support as possible. (Amazon S3 API too, why don’t all cloud storage providers use that?) We’ll be open sourcing the server as a WordPress MU plugin, so that other people can take advantage of our work and benefit their readers and communities.
- December 12, 2009
- New Features, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
I have a very basic Nokia phone bought four years ago in 60 dollars (and it works great despite the old age)! Someday I will upgrade to the gadget(s) shown above! Hope others will enjoy this Christmas present amidst the snow here! 🙂
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Awesome, I’m setting it up now. 🙂
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Wow Matt! Congrats to Team 55 for this! I tried this out on tweetie 2 just now and it works great. Very impressed!
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I do have one question though. Will this eventually work with private blogs that are subscribed to as well at some point?
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Yes, totally. 🙂 That’s a good idea.
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This is good news. Also means my wordpress.com blog can be like my personal micro-blog. Will a plug-in or this feature be added to self-hosted wordpress blogs?
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Since such a big part of the Twitter API is around reading other blogs, and your self-hosted WP doesn’t support that, it’s not a great experience yet. If mainly what you want is ease of posting I’d suggest checking out the WordPress iPhone client or the post-by-email features.
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Sounds great matt .. trying it right now.
My blogging has taken a break due to twittering 😀 this should solve this.
But when is this support coming wordpress.org . I host my own blog
Are you planning to release a plugin for Xmas too ?
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Wow, thanks a bunch. 🙂
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At least now I know what to ask for from Santa – a new phone so I can use this!! Cool.
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You can also run Tweetie 2 on an iPod Touch. (AT&T is not great.)
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Very cool. Does this work with self-hosted WordPress blogs (e.g. on my own domain)? I haven’t been able to find any documentation on the subject, so I’m thinking not. But if you could confirm one way or the other, that’d be much appreciated. Thanks…
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Nope, but as noted at the end of the post we’re probably going to release a plugin for WordPress MU.
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K, Don’t have a cellphone but it might help the readers.:)
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Nice to see you roll this out for WordPress.com users first. Thanks.
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Awesome news guys, much appreciated.
Are @ mentions meant to be working through Tweetie etc? I see it on the blog and when I reply in Tweetie it injects @paulmwatson.wordpress.com etc. but Tweetie doesn’t pick it up in the Mentions tab.
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Cool
Are you planning to do something to add tweets relating to a particular blog post to the comment stream?
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That’s a cool idea, haven’t thought about it yet.
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Wow this is so cool! Thanks 🙂
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Wow, that is so effin’ cool! mucho gracias!
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That’s cool! Thanks.
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The Twitter widget should be able to have twitter lists so you can look at twitter lists on your blog. 🙂
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Wow, you folks never cease to amaze me–and teach me! Thanks for the holiday gift! And here I thought the snow was plenty!
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You really deserve longer Christmas holidays! 😉
Take it easy, you’re faster than us, hahaha.
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That’s awesome!
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i’m so out of the loop on things! 😦
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Matt, I have many blogs associated with my wordpress.com account. How would I select which account Tweetie would work with?
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Under your profile there’s a dropdown that lets you choose a blog.
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looking forward to adding this to SMS blogging feature of @tweetitow, http://tweetitow.com/sms-blogging/. for now we post full-length blog via posterous. with this new development, we can skip posterous and post directly to wordpress.
w/ the trusty SMS, smart phone is not a necessary to update your blog via mobile phone. =)
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Very cool.
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Yata!
So cool; )
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for you, your family and all Automattic folks.
Greetings from Brazil,
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Matt,
Maybe self-hosted WordPress blogs should have an option to syndicate their content to WordPress.com to allow them to be aggregated into one Twitter-like stream? Hmmm?
-Mike
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Better yet would just be for us to support external feeds.
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Does WordPress support login with the OAuth authentication protocol (like the Twitter api) ?
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Not yet.
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Someone just pointed out to me (and in my profile too I think) that this new functionality has nothing to do with Twitter and is not actually “via Twitter API” but rather via a 3rd party application that supports the “Twitter API” — it’s what it looks like to me as well in your content.
This is a nice new feature, though. Thanks for the post.
J.
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Thanks for the OAuth update. Is it likely that OAuth support will be added within the next 3 months ?
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really nice, I’m setting it up now.
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Wow if I wrote that, I would be horrible. Also this looks amazing!!!!!
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this is good idea
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With http://identi.ca and now http://wordpress.com both implementing the Twitter API I can imagine it becoming the micro-blogging standard.
Smart move. Kudos.
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Very ambitious and simplicity in the end of succeeding this marvel. I like it, no doubt. Matt you really should be shared with other great teams out there whom can enjoy your hard work.
This does take some time to do.
Once again congrates on this Matt keep on doin the good things that inspire creativity.
Merry Christmax
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Cool =)
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I’m getting an Error: Could not authenticate you. (Can’t find host).
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You probably have a typo when you entered the API endpoint.
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Very cool friend
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I love it, thank you! I can’t wait for the WordPress MU Plugin! I did notice that if you have more than one blog under one account, it doesn’t seem to work – I assume that is one of the rough edges you mentioned.
Anyway I liked it so much I made a screencast about it 🙂 http://bit.ly/6Cbp7L
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Has anyone else noticed any problems with Tweetie 2 when adding your WordPress.com account?
I started having authentication problems with both my Twitter as well as my WordPress.com accounts from Tweetie 2!
When entering the API endpoint, I noticed that Loren Brichter inserted a message saying “Alternative microblogging services are not officially supported, and some features may not work as expected” Hence, I am reluctant to raise this issue with Atebits.com.
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thank you
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I hope I’m not getting an error, just wanna try on..
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cool..
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Nice Feature Matt 🙂
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I really like this blogging stuff still working on it
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Amazing, Matt!
But I want the feature can be used on FaceBook ?
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Is Tweetie 2 the only app this works with? If not, please provide a website that shows how to start this with Uber Twitter and Social Scope.
Thanks.
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Hi,
This’s cool and honestly if possible i request all bloggers here to buy ur idea.
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this is pretty awesome. thanks for doing the work!
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Another excellent Feature… Thanks a million….
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wow if I can get this working I’ll be hella happy!
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this is awesome, i tried to look at my site on my phone before it would never work, now it should..SWEET!
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