Twitter (and Dreamwidth)

[charmian]

Love Twitter or hate it, it's a popular site, and rather more popular than LJ. However, LJ doesn't have any Twitter integration (as far as I'm aware) and neither does Dreamwidth. IMHO, it would be a good idea for DW to integrate more with Twitter, especially as a) many DW users use Twitter, b) many potential DW users use Twitter, and c) Twitter seems to quite integratable.

How do other (micro)blogging sites integrate with Twitter? There seem to be several ways:
1) using Twitter as a form of login [EDIT: Twitter's materials on signing in with Twitter]
2)crossposting feeds/updates to Twitter
3)importing Twitter feeds as a sidebar widget

Let's look at Posterous, Tumblr, and Wordpress.com

Posterous: One of Posterous's famed features is its crossposting (called "Autoposting"). And I sure do mean crossposting. Twitter is just one of the many sites Posterous can crosspost to [LJ is one of them, Dreamwidth is not], and the Posterous folks openly tout Posterous as a way to easily post pictures and other media to Twitter. Also, Posterous, unlike Tumblr, has built-in commenting, and it allows Twitter login, along with Facebook Connect. I don't think you can import Twitter feeds into your sidebar, though (I may be wrong).

Tumblr: Tumblr also allows you to send info to Twitter (and also Facebook). Tumblr doesn't have built in commenting, but you can edit your layout to use either Disqus or Intense Debate, both of which allow you to use Twitter login (as well as FB connect). And, you can put your Twitter feed in your blog layout, should you so desire to, as a widget.

Wordpress.com: Wordpress recently put in Twitter crossposting (it also allows you to edit how the Tweets appear.) WP.com doesn't use Twitter login. (Though on your own Wordpress install, I'm sure you can do it.) Since Twitter uses RSS, you can easily display your Tweets as a widget in your sidebar

Although DW and LJ don't have built in crossposting to Twitter, you can use a service such as Twitterfeed to post them to a Twitter account (such as I have done here). This works fairly well, IMHO. Twitterfeed also allows you to have a feed input into your Facebook account. What if DW were to allow Facebook Connect as a login option for comments and have an option to automatically crosspost to FB?

(BTW, in terms of the poll, I'm fairly surprised that so many people selected Facebook, especially given that so many people in the LJ Suggestions comm and on LJ news seem to think that the site is the Great Satan.)

Also found something interesting while poking around in Russian LJ: seems that SUP bought out the equivalent of LJ-Toys, and they have some interesting utilities there.

http://ljplus.ru/memories/wholovesme/ <--supposed to show who memoried someone (enter in LJ name), although it only seems to be the users they've spidered, and I'm not sure how that was determined (only Cyrillic journals?)
http://ljplus.ru/friends/common/ <---choose two users, and it'll give you the friends they have in common.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Just the other day I was looking into what it would take for us to have a Twitter widget in layout sidebars.

I think your FB login / comment crosspost is a nifty idea.

[charmian]

I'm not as sure whether this would be as good an idea for DW as it would be for other sites, because so much of the usage of DW journals is through the subscription page, but I don't think there would be any downsides. Would it be very difficult?

Thanks! What do you think about the Twitter login? Do you think it would be difficult to implement it?

[foxfirefey]

I am not sure about Twitter login, the link you use for that has nothing to do with it, and it doesn't look like Twitter supports OpenID. It does look like it supports OAuth, though, so crossposting a link to Twitter is definitely a possibility.

[charmian]

Oh, that was an example of what the "sign in with Twitter" form looked like on a Posterous account. That was to show that Posterous supported signing in with one's Twitter account.

It's not openID which is being used, apparently, but OAuth.

More information here <---So would this be difficult to implement, you think?

[foxfirefey]

It's hard to say--I haven't worked with OAuth first! Sounds like the first step is implementing OAuth for crossposting, and then seeing if it can be modified for logging in.

[charmian]

Interesting. I hope it isn't too hard to work with. I'm not sure what other users would think of this, though.

[foxfirefey]

The way I see it:

* Interoperability overall is good
* Cross posting links to posts made on DW to Twitter helps drive traffic to DW from Twitter, which is great
* People from Twitter logging in to make comments on DW posts is good for DW users

The one problem I see is a UI one: how do you let Twitter users know they can log in without cluttering up the interface, since it's not OpenID?

[charmian]

I totally agree, but there are a lot of people who seem to like building up a wall around the garden...

Indeed. That twitter icon really needs to be visible, but otherwise, there's the risk of too much feature bloat. Perhaps there's a need for a redesign of the entry/comments page? (since they want to change it so that anons can enter their names/emails in too) Or maybe available commenting options can be visible on a bar at the top of where you can comment?

[elena]

since they want to change it so that anons can enter their names/emails in too

IMO Blogger does this rather elegantly with a dynamic menu depending on the selected option (Google ID, OpenID, name/homepage, or Anonymous).

[charmian]

That is a nice system, although it doesn't have the actual comment box there, meaning another step. It would also be really great on DW if for the openID they kind of showed the "prewritten" things for LJ/Typepad/WP/etc, like Blogger does.

[foxfirefey]

People can build up walls around their individual gardens, but I think the site overall wants to be interoperable.

[charmian]

Agreed.

Oh, BTW: http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/7797117.html

Looks like Personal Stats are coming to LJ...

[torachan]

But blogs get a ton of readers via RSS, which is the same thing as reading through your flist. And tbh I think the desire to have a twitter feed on their blog is more about the blog owner than their readers in most cases.

[charmian]

Yeah, can't really hurt; I'm just saying that I don't see much clamoring for Twitter sidebar widgets in particular. Perhaps DW/Lj blog owners shouldn't assume they're being read mainly through a friends/subscription page.

[torachan]

Yeah, for the short time I was using LJ Toys, I was always surprised at how many people were regularly reading my journal just by going to the main page.

But I think in general, the assumption of blog owners is that people are reading from their blog, with RSS readers as an afterthought, thereas with LJ/DW, the assumptions are flipped.

[charmian]

That is interesting. If that is so, it really makes sense to put more stuff on the main page.

[lennan]

Huh. I didn't realize how versatile in cross linking some of these sites are. That's pretty interesting.

I think I gained a lot more respect for twitter after the Iranian election when it was used as a definite tool rather than a message board for people's brain defecations. Likewise, I've always been pretty supportive of using it as a way to notify people of business oriented things, like how the Sprinkles Cupcake truck: http://www.sprinkles.com/ or the Korean burrito Truck: http://kogibbq.com/ use it in order to let customers know where they are.

[charmian]

Yeah, the web is changing, is all I can say.

It's more useful for normal folks if you use it with a phone; that way you can like tell your friends where you are all at once, for example. I just use it for my random braincrap, and I also protect my main Twitter (because really, if I discuss anything IRL, I feel nowadays like I shouldn't communicate it to the internets at large)

[damned_colonial]

I get the impression that there is a fundamental cultural clash between DW and Twitter that means while many of us use both, we are a bit uncomfortable with leakage between the two.

People usually post long-form text on DW, and DW supports tightly threaded conversations. Twitter is obviously short-form, and doesn't thread well.

The upshot is that when people use LoudTwitter to post their tweets in their DW journal, there's usually a round of groaning and "oh god must you" and "please cut". The choppiness and disconnectedness of the tweets doesn't read well in a medium that's mostly more literate and reflective. That's also the main complaint I see about Facebook from DW people: that status updates there are trivial, illiterate, pointless, and don't allow much deep insight into a person's thoughts and experiences (implied: unlike DW where we write lengthy posts and comments all the time).

Which is not to say that we (DW people) don't use twitter and/or facebook, but I think we mostly think of them as different media/forms of expression, and don't see a strong need to cross-connect them. And then, for some people, DW is their fannish place, or has some degree of privacy or pseudonymity they don't want connected with other social media identities which are known to their co-workers, family members, etc. I'm in this boat: I've been using Twitter since 2007 and don't mind people connecting my DW identity with my Twitter identity, but because there are work people following my Twitter I would definitely *not* auto-post my DW entries over there.

[charmian]

True, (about the long form and short form) but I think that there are a lot of blogs which are longer in format, and which still use Twitter to broadcast, as a way of perhaps being found on Twitter and attracting traffic.

IMHO it's better for traffic to go from LJ/DW-->Twitter than the other way around, for that reason. (And, the fact that this is done on w/Loudtwitter in itself seems to prove that there is some demand?)

I'm not sure about "mostly," or if this is necessarily something that is permanent. If tools are created which make it easy to do so, might the 'culture clash' be reduced? And also, since you can have as many Twitter accounts as you like, and be pseudonymous, aren't already a lot of people on Twitter in their fandom identities? (It seems there are a lot)

[damned_colonial]

Speaking as someone who has multiple twitter identities (my company's twitter, my personal one, and a new-post-announcement one for a group blog I run), yes, you can set up multiple ones, but they're a PITA to use. Few clients support it, for one thing. And the more you have, the harder it becomes to connect with people through them. I only actually follow people with my personal account, and largely ignore followers/following on the two others. So if I were to set up an account just to post my DW updates to, I can't see that it would be very rewarding.

None of which should be taken to say that I don't think DW and Twitter have ways they could work together; I'm just theorising about reasons why people haven't found it to be a high priority heretofore.

[charmian]

I see... Thought perhaps in the future there will be more clients to accommodate having several accounts.

Yeah, although many people may not use it, this may open up the way for new groups of people to use DW, and maybe new usages, though.