Tuesday, February 16, 2010

How to post your Google Buzz updates on Twitter automatically

The 140 characters on Twitter are often not enough for science and medical news. Google Buzz does not have a low-number character limit, hence I am channeling the updates from Buzz to Twitter.

This is how to automatically post your Google Buzz updates on Twitter:

1. Go to your Google profile/Buzz and copy the RSS feed - click the orange icon in the browser address bar.

2. Paste the RSS feed in FeedBurner and "burn" a new feed.

3. Activate the "Socialize" function to Twitter. You must already have a Twitter account that you link to FeedBurner. Click "Publicize" tab at the top and then select "Socialize" from the left sidebar.

5. Choose "Body only" (not "Title") in the "Formatting Options" of the FeedBurner feed.

That's all. All your Google Buzz updates will be now posted on Twitter automatically.

You can find more detailed instructions here:
http://buzzusers.com/showthread.php?62-How-to-Publish-your-Buzz-to-Twitter

Comments:

Arin Basu - Nice suggestions.

I have noted that if you set up to autopost buzz to twitter this way and twitter is connected to buzz in your links area of the google buzz profile, then your buzz as tweets show up in Buzz and then get fed again as tweets (sort of a loop that keeps on going between twitter and buzz). One way to get rid of this is to remove the twitter link from buzz. However, if you then like to bring in your (and favourite ones from other people you follow) tweets into buzz, you cannot do that.

I like to link my twitter and my buzz together. One other thing I do to send my buzzes (and favourite/interesting buzzes) to twitter is to open the comment link, choose the material to email to my posterous (http://www.posterous.com) account. This allows me to send longer pieces as shortened urls to twitter (it maintains a copy on my posterous for occasional review of interesting links for work). I have linked my posterous with twitter, so one post to posterous (public view) allows me to post to twitter as well. However, it is not autopost.

For twitter to buzz is usually by way of retweets that show up in my buzz box.
I think buzz+gmail can be very conveniently used as a central hub of almost all incoming/outflowing communication (RSS, tweets, facebook updates, emails from other people and non-gmail accounts). Buzz with online document storage, & using services like posterous, also saves on bandwidth & data storage, and avoid unnecessary duplication.

Arin Basu - For buzz >> posterous >> twitter connection to work (corrected version),

1) you will need to post to posterous from your gmail account (presumably that has buzz on it).
2) You can just use posterous and simultaneously post to both buzz and twitter if your posterous account is also connected to buzz. To link your posterous account to buzz, do:
a) Add the following to the posterous "bio" section:
Your Name, etc
b) Then add your posterous URL to your google profile and click add
c) Next time when Google spiders your posterous account, hopefully it will add your posterous to your buzz profile and then you are all set
d) check your google buzz profile connected sites and add the posterous site if you want

3) There are a couple of ways to do that:
1) (long way): create a buzz post, then use the comments section to email the buzz post to twitter AT posterous dot com (remember again, your posterous and gmail must be the same)
2) Shorter way (if you have configured your twitter to connect to buzz as well): just send an email to twitter AT posterous dot com; the mail will appear at both buzz and twitter

A point to remember is: using buzz@gmail.com will send only your subject line to buzz.

There are many other ways to channel, pretty much using similar processes. These are quite flexible.

Updated: 02/17/2010