TwitteReader turns Twitter into a feed reader

My Webware colleague Don Reisinger would get a kick out of TwitteReader, a new and free service which turns Twitter into something resembling Google Reader (something he's ditched entirely in place of Twitter). Once you've plugged in your username and password, it presents the latest tweets as individual feed items, which you can cruise through either by reading the short snippets (a la Google Reader) or expanding them out to full posts with a click.

Just like Google Reader and Gmail, you can move up and down the list with the same J and K keyboard shortcuts. You can also star items, which adds them to your Twitter favorites list. The application keeps track of what you've read and what you haven't, which, depending on how many people you're following, could be useful. If a system like Google Reader's trends were to be applied to this you could see which people's updates you're not reading and cut them out of your followers list.

Of course the obvious must be stated here--you can simply take the RSS feed of your friends provided by Twitter and plug it into Google Reader to accomplish something quite similar. TwitteReader's killer feature, however, is that it lets you post and reply to messages from each post, just like you would in Twitter.

TwitteReader turns Twitter messages into something resembling Google Reader. (click to embiggen)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

[Philanthropy-Family]

Josh.

But you can't "simply take the RSS feed of your friends provided by Twitter and plug it into Google Reader" can you..? (not at a stream level anyway).

The follow your stream, the Twitter feed requires authentication via your username + password, so we didn't think that was possible through gReader..? It is possible to follow someone on an individual level, but that means adding each each persons' feed into gReader individually.

If there is a way, please advise. Unlike Don (Reisinger) we are 100% unable to ditch our Google Reader dependency.

[adamjarret]

I provide a free service called GTweet (<a href="http://www.gtweet.net">gtweet.net</a>) that allows Twitter users to read their "with friends" timeline in Google Reader.

Your account information is never stored on the GTweet server, but rather is decrypted and parsed from an individual feed URL that is unique to you.

GTweet goes beyond dumping the raw RSS feed from Twitter into Google Reader by generating a custom RSS feed that makes it easy to reply to and favorite individual tweets and displays each tweeter's user icon.

It's currently still in beta, but I use it every day. I hope you find it useful - please send any feedback to adam at adamjarret dot com

Adam

[WeCanDoBIZ]

I am struggling to see how this offers much more over just reading your incoming Tweets through any of the applications that exist that enable you to group, filter and more. Surely you lose all thsoe benefits, and only get to see a portion of what's being Tweeted? This looks like it takes away functionality rather than adding it. You can't even run it as a panel in iGoogle to get the feeds along with other feeds you may have.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

[macewan_]

You really ought to tell folks whether or not software is OS X, Linux or Microsoft OS.

[macewan_]

Ah, I see that it's webapp. My mistake.

[elponderado]

twitter4skype has been offering this kind of service for some time. It's my feed reader after dumping googles reader as well. Very good stuff.

[CodeLab]

Not Exactly Like Google Reader. If I Have Say, 50 Unread Tweets, I Cannot Take A Quick Look At It Without Clicking Newer/Older Buttons
With Google Reader Things Are Much Easier(For RSS Feeds), Just Scroll. No Previous/Next Buttons

[koltregaskes]

If you dumb, like me, use the login box at the top right to log into your Twitter account. I got confused when I got to the page and wondered why I was downloading what appeared to be a WP plugin.