ReadTwit: All the Links From Your Twitter Stream in A Filtered RSS Feed

Written by Jolie O'Dell / September 14, 2009 5:30 PM / 15 Comments

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

In these hard times, it takes something pretty nifty to get us to write about a Twitter app; our eyebrows rose an inch or two when we were told about ReadTwit, an RSS application that makes Twitter smaller, faster, and better for those who need to find and consume interesting links.

ReadTwit scrapes the tweets from everyone you follow and throws any links therein into an RSS feed just for you, with dupes deleted and URL shorteners eliminated. Users are then able to control the display, filter out users, or ban hashtags. Read on for screenshots and more.

As you can see, ReadTwit is compatible with a few good feed readers; we decided to test the app in Google Reader.

As soon as we clicked the Google Reader link, we were subscribed and checking out some very real-time news from our friends around the web, complete with images and summaries from the linked-to pages:

And here's a look at ReadTwit's filters and display options in action:

A related Firefox add-on, Tweecious, posts all the links in your Twitter stream to your Del.icio.us account. Still, we prefer ReadTwit's filtering capabilities and Google Reader integration.

ReadTwit is a product from Lionite, a two-year-old web dev shop in Israel. "One of us came up with the idea," reads their About page, "and it seemed simple enough, so we said 'What the heck?' The project took several days from concept to launch."

Although they acknowledge the app's not a life-changer, the ReadTwit team is correct in stating that it makes a common web service easier to use. Many thanks to Ezra Butler for the pointer.

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Comments

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Excellent. Have been waiting for this. (actually I assumed it existed already but just haven't gotten around to searching for it...)

Posted by: Benjamin | September 14, 2009 6:15 PM

I must be old school but I still use email...so I whipped up an app called tweetalarm (http://www.tweetalarm.com) to alert you by email when someone tweets about the stuff you care about - Google alerts for twitter.

Posted by: Tweet Alerts | September 14, 2009 8:11 PM

awesome ill be using this one from now on thank you
http://Evolvhealthy.com

Posted by: EvolvHealth | September 14, 2009 8:17 PM

definitely worth knowing about -thanks for reporting

IJG

Posted by: Ian Goldsmid | September 14, 2009 8:35 PM

This sounds like a twitter app worth talking about. Can't wait to experiment with it.

Posted by: John Vasko | September 14, 2009 8:37 PM

I think the service is great. However instead of just having a block list if you could also have a allow list. If you follow 10k people it would be hard to keep up with that in an RSS feed. But maybe some people only share good links and others you talk with. So this would work better for you to use for the good link sharers. Make Sense?

Posted by: Chad Engle | September 14, 2009 8:57 PM

Nice post, and it seems to be an interesting twitter also looking forward to use it and hope this works well..
Thank you for sharing this post.....

Posted by: bluetooth kopfhorer | September 14, 2009 9:16 PM

Jolie, thanks for writing a review about Readtwit, we're honored!

@Chad Engle:
This feature is in consideration and should be incorporated real soon. If you have more suggestions, you're also welcome to post them at our GetSatisfaction board: http://getsatisfaction.com/lionite

Thanks,

Posted by: Adam Benayoun | September 14, 2009 9:17 PM

Sounds great. I had been using the much simpler tweetlinkmonster until recently.

Posted by: Ahsan Ali | September 14, 2009 10:57 PM

This thing is a link journalism dream come true! Great stuff!

Posted by: Fabrice Epelboin | September 15, 2009 5:45 AM

Excellent, is to try! However ... I have my reservations.

Posted by: Ana Delgado | September 15, 2009 11:36 PM

Awesome! I have been waiting for sometime to have a repository of all my links with Twitter. This is a cool app!

Posted by: Ashwin | September 16, 2009 12:44 AM

This is brilliant, everything all in one place.

Posted by: Deeper Voice | September 16, 2009 8:22 AM

I'm more of a fan of @microplaza -- http://microplaza.com. Does the same thing, with a few nice differences like being able to make bundles, etc.

Posted by: Boris Mann | September 16, 2009 11:56 AM

hi

@chad engle: Your comment/request definitely makes sense. It's really hard to keep up with the stream when you're following >400 ppl. That's why at microplaza we introduced the option of creating tribes you can add/remove users to/from.

@bmann thanks for being a fan!

Posted by: Elena | September 21, 2009 3:57 AM