How To Bring Live Tweets To Readers Not On Twitter

Featuring live tweets on news websites is a great way of bringing readers who may not use Twitter into the conversations that are happening there. Large news sites often use custom code to accomplish the task. Smaller sites tend to use Twitter's own widget, which I find slow and inadequate for the task. Fortunately, there is a solution that uses a tool that many of us are already familiar with: CoveritLive. CoveritLive is not just for live blogging. The service is able to pull in the live tweets from individual users, lists, search terms and hashtags. It does it well and in real time. While using the service might be bulkier than dropping in some JavaScript, I find it to be well worth it. Here’s how to do it. 1. Go To CoveritLive And Create A New Event If you do not know how to use CoveritLive, a some great tutorials are available here. 2. Select The Twitter Feeds And Hashtags You Want To Track At the next screen you will be presented with embed code. Scroll down to the box labeled “Additional Options.” Select “Add Twitter Feeds.” Type in the usernames, lists, hashtags and search terms you would like to include (you can always add more later). Press save. 3. Copy Your Embed Code Into Your Favorite Content Management System Or Blogging Platform 4. Activate Your Live Event This can be done either by pressing “Launch Your Live Event Now!” or by heading to the “Upcoming Events” page. No tweets will pulled in unless your event is live. 5. Select “Newest Entries on Top” 6. Edit Twitter Feeds (optional) Go to the “Twitter & Video” tab, and hit “Show/Edit Twitter Feeds.” You can modify the feeds that you added earlier this way. 7. Remember To End Your Live Event When You’re Done Do this by going to Tools -> “End Live Event.” If you forget to end your live event, you will get a ton of nagging e-mails reminding you to do so! To see this in action, click here.

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How To Bring Live Tweets To Readers Not On Twitter

Ethan Klapper

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Ethan Klapper