ETA (8/28/13): Twitter triggers are back in IFTTT! They were added back in August 2013 using the new Twitter API.
If you use IFTTT to capture your Tweets and send them to another service, you probably received a notice from them yesterday about how they will be removing Twitter triggers on September 27:
In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.
I use IFTTT to send all of my tweets to Evernote so I have a record of them. Since this is based on a Twitter trigger, it will no longer work after September 27. Last night, I experimented with an alternative that appears to be working fine this morning: using an RSS feed and sending that to Evernote. Here is how I set it up in IFTTT:
Step 1: Choose Trigger Channel
I selected the Feed channel.
Step 2: Choose a Trigger
I selected New Feed Item
Step 3: Complete Trigger Fields
In the Feed URL field, I entered the URL for the twitter feed for my twitter account. In my case that feed is: http://api.twitter.com/1/
Step 4: Choose Action Channel
I selected Evernote for my Action Channel.
Step 5: Choose an Action
I selected the Create A Note action.
Step 6: Complete Action Fields
Here is how I completed the action fields for Evernote:
- Title: EntryTitle
- Body: EntryContentvia FeedTitle EntryURL
- Notebook: <enter the notebook you want these notes go to to>
- Tags: <enter the tags you want to use for these notes>
The Results
Here is what a note in Evernote looked like using the Twitter trigger method (the one that is going away):
And here is what the note looks like with the new trigger, via RSS instead of Twitter:
I imagine with some tweaking of the Action fields, you could get them to look almost identical.
There is more of a delay between the time you make the tweet and the time it shows up as a note, but despite that delay, so far every tweet I’ve made since adding this new method appears to be coming through to Evernote.
I’m turning off the new method until September 27, when I will enable it permanently, but I wanted to share this solutions with others who were worried that they might not be able to use Twitter as a trigger in IFTTT going forward.
RSS - Posts
This is great and is working well for me too. I’ve created another recipe like this one but using the URL http://api.twitter.com/1/favorites.rss?screen_name=jamietr instead. This one will create new notes for tweets which you favourite.
Only one question – I see this is using the v1 Twitter API, which is says will be turned off in the coming months. Is there a way to do this using API v1.1?
Thx garo, I’m using favorites this way to make my toread list. Maybe by replacing /1/ by /1.1/ it can work with the new api?!
From what I’m reading, it will work until 2013, march 5 but after this date, iftty has to creat something with json.
Thank you so much for posting this – I managed to set it up and have made the recipe public here: https://ifttt.com/recipes/58229
Jamie,
Thanks for the workaround. It works great.
I blogged about it in my Evernote blogcast The Elephant Channel (http://elephantchannel.net/).
Neens: I referenced your IFTTT recipe in my blog post. Thanks for sharing.
Pierre.
Unfortunately Twitter is killing the RSS feeds on March 5. So, we’ll need to find another way to export Twitter updates.
Hey Jamie! Is this still working for you? I’m seeing an error with IFTTT that the RSS isn’t valid.
Caroline, it is still working for me. I checked IFTTT and the last time the trigger fired for the Twitter RSS feed was 45 minutes ago (for my feed). I then went into Evernote and I have a note for a Tweet I made a little more than 45 minutes ago. So, for me, at least, it is still working.
Thanks for the reply, Jamie! I’m trying it again — just made a fresh recipe based on your steps. Fingers crossed that it will work. The other recipes I’d tried in the past stopped working.
Hi,
I tried this with the “new feed item matches” option because I only want to get those of my tweets, that have a link in it. My keyword therefore is “http://” but it doesn’t seem to work. I also tried it without // or :. Any suggestions how to get only tweets with links?
ok, now it triggered a retweet with a link once. but i still can’t figure out why it done this and ignores others…
I used Jamie’s recipe above for a while but had some problems, I got “General Trigger Error” and after five consecutive errors the recipe was inactivated.
Now I’ve implemented the method described here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-rss-feeds/27931/ and it seems to be working and it uses the new Twitter API v1.1.
Twitter (RSS) to email/evernote etc. using IFTTT no longer works, it generates “General Trigger Error”s after initially working. This Tweet from @IFTTT: “IFTTT @IFTTT 7 Feb
@*** those RSS are being discontinued. They are not reliable in your Recipes, so we recommend avoiding them.”
I used the RSS workaround until it stopped working a few weeks back when Twitter retired RSS feeds. Apparently (according to Twitter) RSS feeds are used “rarely” these days! What planet are they on?!
Anyway, I struggled for a while in working out how I could get this working- the problem was having to authenticate yourself to get the data. So in the end I built an app. You install it on your website and I have made it as easy as possible for everyone to use- not just for developers. As well as giving you more RSS feeds than Twitter gave you, it has some powerful filters so you can do some cool things with it. It’s called Twools, and you can download it from my article on it- http://iag.me/socialmedia/tools/introducing-twools-your-twitter-rss-feeds-unleashed/
I’d love to know what you think.