It's a great idea, but I'm getting a lot of incorrect content when many different things share the same domain (e.g. all links to any Facebook friend show the same random Facebook page that has nothing to do with my friends, or links to any Bible verse on biblegateway.com show the same entirely unconnected verse of the day). So that might need a bit of work. But when it DOES work it really helps the user experience!
John Fredrickson
· 6 months ago
Hi Andy, You're right that the system isn't perfect and relies on an expected standard use of RSS. if a page uses RSS in ways that we aren't expecting things might not look quite right as you pointed out. Unfortunately all we can really do in those edge cases is keep an eye out for them and try to fix them on a case-by-case basis. We'll take a look at the two you mentioned and see what we can do.
Thanks for the feedback.
andygeers
· 6 months ago
For reference, all Facebook friend links produce this content: "Hi friends!
We have just started a new page on facebook called Rose and Lily Australia.
If you would like a fast and easy way to follow our freshbabyfood blog - then please become a fan of our facebook page and we will send updates to you that way.
And best of all - we are running a competition where you could be one of 10 people to win a Babymoov Shirt Bib (valued at $20.00) if you become a fan of our page.
Cool eh?"
It's the same content every time. I guess it's something to do with the fact that your scraper isn't logged in to Facebook so doesn't see the user's page properly.
jeshyr
· 6 months ago
What's the best way to report these edge case failures? Is tweeting them to @tweetree enough?
John Fredrickson
· 6 months ago
You could send them to info@tweetree.com. Either way we should see them. Thanks!
lunchinsuva
· 6 months ago
I can't remember giving you permisssion to strip the ads out of my Blogger RSS feed.
That's my content, and you do not have republishing rights ... so stick with generally accepted RSS TOS and publish the whole thing (ads included), a 'fair use' excerpt only, or leave it alone.
Finally ... where's the optout? Never signed up for your service, but you've created an account based on my content anyway. Your concept is great, but creating a permanent, searchable URI based on my content without opt-in is unethical
Costa Walcott
· 6 months ago
Hi,
We don't strip ads out of the feeds. The only way we alter the content is disabling Javascript, which is only done to prevent malicious code from being run.
We specifically use RSS so that website owners have control over what we show. What users see on Tweetree should be no different than what they would see in any other feedreader. Is it possible the ads depend on Javascript? If there's a bug on our side, we'd be happy to help fix it.
In terms of opting out, that's kind of like asking to opt out of Google Reader. The best way would be to simply remove or alter your RSS feed.
I want to opt out of that ... actually, wait ... you should have waited for me to opt in.
You're not like Google Reader at all ... that's account and opt-in dependent. It's private, I can add and remove feeds, I can close my account. Any my stream is not exposed unless I publish it deliberately.
So, how about letting me close this unauthorised 'account' with you guys.
Costa Walcott
· 6 months ago
No "account" has been created. Putting any public Twitter username in the URL, like http://tweetree.com/<username>, will display that user's tweets, formatted and with links back to Twitter.com. This comes directly from the Twitter API and is not hosted or saved by us. Twitter's TOS, at http://twitter.com/tos, not only allows but encourages (their words) our type of site, as long as there are links back to twitter (which we have). Here is the exact text from their TOS:
"The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter."
With that said, if you'd like, as a courtesy, we can prevent tweets from being displayed specifically on your page.
jeshyr
· 6 months ago
I've been a long-time tweetree user and I'm LOVING the new integration of web RSS feeds when there's a URL mentioned. It makes Twitter so VERY much more useful to me! Thanks for a great outside-the-box idea :)
John Fredrickson
· 6 months ago
Awesome! Thanks Ricky.
chisigmad
· 6 months ago
<deleted>
jfredson
· 6 months ago
It's something that we're looking into. Thanks for the feedback Bill.
BillShepp
· 6 months ago
<Sorry, re-posted under proper account>
I appreciate the thinking behind this, but in practice I find it makes the stream too data-intensive. I often use Tweetree from my mobile phone via Opera Mini. Since you've made this change I find that many Tweetree pages are now 6x larger than they used to be, and also more difficult to navigate since there are scroll bars for each feed within the larger scrollbar. Would it be possible to make this behavior user-selectable, such that I could choose not to have the full feeds brought in? Or, if that's not an option, perhaps you could identify mobile clients and not do so then?
jfredson
· 6 months ago
Hehe, no worries. See my comment above.
mlgreen8753
· 4 months ago
Thanks for the video. It seems like a cool way to network and advertise.
All Comments
You're right that the system isn't perfect and relies on an expected standard use of RSS. if a page uses RSS in ways that we aren't expecting things might not look quite right as you pointed out. Unfortunately all we can really do in those edge cases is keep an eye out for them and try to fix them on a case-by-case basis. We'll take a look at the two you mentioned and see what we can do.
Thanks for the feedback.
"Hi friends!
We have just started a new page on facebook called Rose and Lily Australia.
If you would like a fast and easy way to follow our freshbabyfood blog - then please become a fan of our facebook page and we will send updates to you that way.
And best of all - we are running a competition where you could be one of 10 people to win a Babymoov Shirt Bib (valued at $20.00) if you become a fan of our page.
Cool eh?"
It's the same content every time. I guess it's something to do with the fact that your scraper isn't logged in to Facebook so doesn't see the user's page properly.
That's my content, and you do not have republishing rights ... so stick with generally accepted RSS TOS and publish the whole thing (ads included), a 'fair use' excerpt only, or leave it alone.
Finally ... where's the optout? Never signed up for your service, but you've created an account based on my content anyway. Your concept is great, but creating a permanent, searchable URI based on my content without opt-in is unethical
We don't strip ads out of the feeds. The only way we alter the content
is disabling Javascript, which is only done to prevent malicious code
from being run.
We specifically use RSS so that website owners have control over what
we show. What users see on Tweetree should be no different than what
they would see in any other feedreader. Is it possible the ads depend
on Javascript? If there's a bug on our side, we'd be happy to help
fix it.
In terms of opting out, that's kind of like asking to opt out of
Google Reader. The best way would be to simply remove or alter your
RSS feed.
I want to opt out of that ... actually, wait ... you should have waited for me to opt in.
You're not like Google Reader at all ... that's account and opt-in dependent. It's private, I can add and remove feeds, I can close my account. Any my stream is not exposed unless I publish it deliberately.
So, how about letting me close this unauthorised 'account' with you guys.
"The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter."
With that said, if you'd like, as a courtesy, we can prevent tweets from being displayed specifically on your page.
I appreciate the thinking behind this, but in practice I find it makes the stream too data-intensive. I often use Tweetree from my mobile phone via Opera Mini. Since you've made this change I find that many Tweetree pages are now 6x larger than they used to be, and also more difficult to navigate since there are scroll bars for each feed within the larger scrollbar. Would it be possible to make this behavior user-selectable, such that I could choose not to have the full feeds brought in? Or, if that's not an option, perhaps you could identify mobile clients and not do so then?