Two of the first blogs I started reading were Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, but thanks to changing schedules and subject matter, my readership of each has waned and waxed a few times over. Seven years and counting is a long while to read any one blogger; I can only imagine what it’s like to be writing the same blog for such a period of time.
Now in the past couple weeks, twinned discoveries have made it easier for me to follow what each writes. As you may have already guessed, the answer was Twitter feeds (click through for the Twitter accounts themselves):
And:
Both are straight-up repurposing of each blog’s RSS feed routed through Twitterfeed.com. I contacted both to find out if they had personally created them; Reynolds responded that he hadn’t. The brevity of his response led me to believe that it didn’t seem to bother him, and that he if he did tweet, he’d have characters to spare.
In the time since, I’ve been looking around for other examples of popular blogs with automated Twitter feeds. The list was not a long one — I found @dailykos, @thinkprogress, @newsbusters and @crooksandliars. (Feel free to list more in the comments.)
This also gave me an idea: Why not create such Twitter accounts for a few political blogs that myself and others might want to follow? So I have; all are brand new and as of this writing none have updated. I may have the feed configured incorrectly, but then it’s also Sunday evening. If it still isn’t updating correctly tomorrow, I’ll get in and fix them. If you’re from one of the blogs below and you’d prefer this account not exist or you’d prefer to take control of it yourself, just let me know. In the meantime, click through the screen shots below to see (and follow) the accounts for yourself:
ABC News Political Radar:
Update: Yep, they’re all working.
I set up an account for @Heritage for this same purpose. Followers get everything from blog posts from The Foundry and our current research to video clips and event notifications.
I did the same for @UticaNY, which tracks the Observer-Dispatch and other blogs from Central New York.
Some people probably frown on this use of Twitter, but like you I find it’s a great way to keep tabs on what’s happening.
Wow, good idea. Reminds me of livejournal syndicate feeds, where livejournal users can create feeds for their friendslist of their favorite blogs. Since Twitter doesn’t post an advertising (except for its japan version) I don’t see why any of the bloggers would have a problem with this.
Question though. Are those tinyurl links linking to the instapundit post in question, or are they linking to whatever Instapundit is linking to?
for instance, if instapundit is linking to the NY Times, does the tinyurl link in the twitter feed go to nytimes or the instapudit post linking to NYtimes
ah, nevermind, i clicked through to the feeds to find out for myself. that’s unfortunate, it’d be cool if you could just follow his links from the feed.
Yup, to Instapundit first, so one stop over. Not that any of these blogs mentioned here need any help with their traffic, but it doesn’t deprive them of any, either. That said, I’ll probably still drop a note to those I’ve set up on Twitter in the morning, just to be polite.
I guess using an actual feedreader is way too 2005 for Blog PI? :)
Can you do ones for Perez, digby and stuff white people like for me also? kthx
@Melanie
I’m very particular about what I put into my feed reader, because I’m liable to not look at it for a few days and if it gets backed up, I’ll give up and delete everything. So for now it’s mostly friends’ blogs and a few other sites that aren’t updated often.
These blogs, however, are updated all the time — so the best way for me to follow them is to place them in a stream of information I’m already looking at. And if I miss them, no big deal. Twitter is a stream I merely dip into when I have the time.