Learn How To use Twitter From Feeddemon

As tweeting is not officially supported by Google Reader you have to make the starred or tagged items public in order to share them in Twitter. What if you don’t want to share something with the public and still be able to inform it to your Twitter followers? Well Google Reader proves lame in this case. Let us see how you can share any feed item on Twitter without making it public. FeedDemon will save the day for you. If you read feeds its almost obvious that you know about FeedDemon. But, if you are not, FeedDemon is a free tool to accumulate and read feeds. You can synchronize the feeds with your Google Reader account as well.

Setting Up FeedDemon

If you already use FeedDemon you do not need to follow this section. Proceed to the next.
1. Download and install FeedDemon.
2. During installation you will be asked if you wish to sync your feeds with your Google reader account. If you wish to do so just add your Google Reader account details to the wizard.

Tweeting From FeedDemon

Earlier versions of FeedDemon didn’t support Twitter and hence they were not added by default. So let us first verify that. If its there we will proceed to the next steps and if its not there we will add it and then proceed to the next steps.
Verifying Twitter Features
1. Go to [Windows Drive Letter]:\Program Files\FeedDemon\Data\SendTo.
2. If a file “Twitter.xml” is already there then your FeedDemon has Tweeting capabilities already installed. If not then let us add it.
3. Open notepad and type the following code within it.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<fdsendto service=”Twitter” useInternalHttp=”false” template=”http://twitter.com/home?status={title} {url-short}” />

4. Now save it as “Twitter.xml” in the directory mentioned above. Remember to add the extension to .xml and  change “File type” to All files.(Refer screenshot below).

Now you have successfully added Twitter Share to FeedDemon.
Adding Send To Button in FeedDemon
The Send to button is not shown by default in FeedDemon for single feed entry. Follow the steps to add it.
1. Open FeedDemon and locate to any feed. Click the button, “Choose Newspaper Icons”.

2. An Window will open which will let you add the Send To button to a feed entry. Select the checkbox beside “Send To”.

3. You will notice a new button beside the feed entry.(Screenshot below)

Log In To Twitter From FeedDemon
Well to tweet anything from any Twitter tool you need to be logged in to Twitter within that tool. FeedDemon is the tool here. So let me show you how to log in to Twitter using FeedDemon.
1. With FeedDemon opened, press Ctrl + T to open a new tab.
2. Type “http://twitter.com/login” in the address bar and hit enter. As the page loads, enter your login details and log in Twitter the similar way you do in any other browser.
3. Once logged in you can close the tab or keep that open(if thats not a headache ).
Posting a Feed entry as Tweet
Now whenever you wish to post a feed item as tweet click the “Send To” button (beside it) and select Twitter. You will be asked to login to Twitter if not done already.

Reading Twitter From FeedDemon
Well as Twitter lets you subscribe to the RSS of your friend’s timeline you can also read tweets from within FeedDemon. Let’s see how to set it up.
1. Open Twitter in a new tab within FeedDemon. Follow the steps as mentioned earlier in the “Log In To Twitter Fom FeedDemon” section.
2. Now as you log in you will notice an orange icon to the right of the address bar. Click that icon and you will see subscribe links to your friend’s timeline(what your friends are tweeting) and your mentions timeline(if somebody mentions your twitter name in tweet in a word replies to you).

3. Click the two links one at a time and subscribe to them. While subscribing make sure you add them to a new folder “Twitter” to segregate the feeds in a proper fashion. As Twitter uses secure feeds you will be asked to log in to your account. It must be noted that secure feeds cannot be synchronized with Google Reader account.
4. That is all. Now every time someone(you follow) tweets it will be fetched via feeds. You will also get notified if somebody mentions.
Replying Any Tweet
FeedDemon 3.0+ lets you reply to any tweet directly by default. Every Tweet(that now you see as a feed entry) has an option of replying. Click that to reply your friend.

As the screenshot shows FeedDemon 3.0+ auto expands bit.ly shortened URLs by default. This is also a neat feature.

 

A message to the Developer

FeedDemon is my favorite tool and as I had figured out a way to tweet from it, I have started liking(and using) it even more. But so far my Tweeting is concerned I am a bit choosy in case of scheduled tweets. I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets. If I could possibly schedule my tweets from Feeddemon itself I will be more than glad to abandon Hootsuite.
That is all I had figured out so far on how to use Twitter on FeedDemon. You can surely put in some more efforts to find out more. And if you already know about somne more tricks please feel free to tease us with that via comments.

Via Ampercent.com