Frequently Asked Questions
What is Twitterlive.net
Twitterlive.net is a web 2.0 service that lets you create a channel that automatically feeds your blog to twitter, track the clicks
and collects real-time traffic data. Twitterlive.net launched in mid January 2010 and quickly became an alternative to the stablished services available,
because in addition to feed your blog to all the social networks you have your own feed channel where you can post pictures, videos or simply an status
update. Twitterlive gives more visibility to your blog posts.
Why use twitterlive.net
If SEO
is important to you, then that alone is a very good reason to use twitterlive.net over any other twitter feed services. Here is why; the title of
the page of your feed channel will be the name of your feed; and this is very important because the page title weighs heavily in the algorithms
of all the major search engines; therefore give your feed channel a meaningful name so people can easily find it during an Internet search.
Remember that the title is the first and probably the only thing the searcher will look at in the search results.
In addition when you create a feed channel twitterlive will import your twitter background and colors that will be used for your feed channel page.
The image background you place on your twitter profile is your social media brand, so be creative and design something that will stand out.
Paused feed channels will not be visible by search engines.
Getting Started
- Sign up to twitterlive by creating a new account or login with your OpenID
- Add a new feed channel using the rss url from your site
- Watch the stats and track how many clicks your stories get
Features
Here are some of the main features:
- You can set the frequency you want twtterlive to visit your site to fetch new feed items
- You can set the interval you want the feed items to be published
- Twitterlive has its own url shortener service that collects real-time traffic data
- You can have your own feed channel on twitterlive
- Your readers can visit your channel and easily search for previous posts
- Other services offer url shortener and others offer to feed your blog to twitter, but we offer both plus visibility on the twitterlive timeline
Architecture and Reliability
The twitterlive.net service has three components:
- tiwtterlive.net: this is the visible part or user interface that allows you create the feed channels, view your stats, manage your account and browse
the publishers channels.
- twlv.net: this web application lives under its own domain name and its only function is to resolve the short urls generated by twitterlive.net and collect real-time traffic data.
- twitterlive updater: this is a multithreading desktop application that is installed
on a separate machine. This is the invisible part and the core component of the service that does the heavy weight lifting.
The updater imports the feeds, short the urls and publishes the stories from your feed at the intervals set by you. Its work does not affect the performance of the main site and
keeps doing its work even if the site is down for any reason.
Help us spread twitterlive
Twitterlive is a free service and all we ask you in return is to help us spread the word. Voice yourself; write a testimonial,
a blog article, a comment, a success story or better yet 
post a tweet about this
or post a review on oneforty.com/twitterlive
Why Twitterlive is registered as Tweetlive with Twitter
By the time we registered the Twitterlive application Twitter would not accept any app that includes the name Twitter; hence the name Tweetlive.
How can I feed my blog to all my social networks
If you have a PingFM account enter you API key on the "Add Feed" page, and any new feed item will be published on all the social networks you
have linked with your PingFM account. Optionally if have created "Posting Groups" you can select to which group you want your updates to be published on.
Feed your blog to twitter only
If you don't want to publish you blog on twitterlive but want to feed your blog to twitter like other services do and still enjoy
our reliable service and the real time analytics, uncheck the "Feed to Twitterlve" box on the "Add Feed" page. Your updates will not be visible on
twitterlive and your blog will not be listed in any part of the twitterlive.net site.
If you are using twlv.net or bit.ly as the url shortener service you will have access to the
analytics from your "Account" section.
Can I feed a social network via ping.fm that includes the title and description of the feed
Yes, you can use Twitterlive to post by title and desctiption to the social networks that support it. Enter your ping.fm API key, select "blog" from the "posting method" drop down box, (optionally you
can enter the posting group), and select "Title-Description" from the "Post Content" drop down box. You can also uncheck "Post a Link" if you want to.
For more informatin read the ping.fm documentation about posting methods.
My feed is not updating to Ping.fm
Make sure you have set up your feed correctly. If you have selected on the ping.fm settings the "Microblog" or "Status" posting method and for the "Post Content" by title-description; ping.fm will not update
your social network because it does not support updates by title and description. Only the "Blog" method does support updates by title and desctiption. Also make sure that have set up your social networks correctly on your ping.fm
dashbord at the ping.fm web site.
I have an asterisk in front of my short links that use the Ping.fm service
Twitterlive has to prepend the links to tell Ping.fm not to short any links. Login to your Ping.fm account, click settings, then default settings, uncheck "Track statistics on shortened
links" and check "Shorten links in posts", click "Update Settings". After you make the changes the new links will not show the asterisk. You should do this because the asterisk render the links unusable
by some Twitter clients.
Spamming
Twiter is a great tool if it is used properly. Make sure you have something of value to feed to your Twitter account. In general if you need to feed more
than 30 updates to twitter per hour then this is not the service for you. Twitterlive has been created to promote and feed you blog to twitter as a marketing tool, but that doesn’t
mean you should spam your followers.
We do not allow spamming, so if we feel that you are spamming, we will delete your feed.
Feeds that direct to malware or phishing sites
or illegal downloads will be deleted too. Do not use the same Rss Url to feed two different accounts, twitter considers that cross feeding and they will suspent the offender accounts.
Twitterlive is no responsible if your twitter account get suspended. Follow these simple rules and you will have a long list of followers.
Is there a limit in how many feed channels I can create?
You can create up to 5 feed channels by twitter profile to feed Twitterlive.net, and up to 10 feeds channels to feed your twitter or pingFM accounts.
Be aware that twitter has a limit on how many updates a user can post, so the more feeds you have the more chances you have to surpass the rate limit.
After you go over the rate limit there is the possibility that your feed channel will be paused automatically after consecutive errors from twitter.
Why can't twitterlive parse my feed?
If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 is very easy to find your Rss feed. Click the Rss feed icon
located by the url address bar in Firefox or the Rss feed icon on the menu bar in IE8. See screen shots below.
Blogspot users try the original Rss like this: http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
replace the "myblogname" with the name of your blog.
If it doesn't work is because you are using feedburner; delete Rss feed entry from your feedburner account and try again.
As a general rule Rss format works better than Atom format.
Occasionally twitterlive cannot parse certain feeds specially old feedburner versions and Atom 1.0. Make sure you are using the url from the rss feed of your site and if you have
multiple choices of feed select either Rss 2.0 or Atom 0.3 as these are the most likely to work with twitterlive. Try validating your feed at the W3 Feed Validation Service
that will display common problems with Rss feeds, and if you still have problems please contact us and we'll try to help you.
When I try to add a twitter account I get this error: twitter returned error: (401) Unauthorized, and I know my account is active
Computers and browsers behave in different ways sometimes so they way to avoid this error is to login to your twitter account first and then
click the "Authorize a twitter account" link on your twitterlive account page. After you allow Twitterlive (Tweetlive) access you will be redirect to your account page and magic should
have happened.
I can't find my feed; I think it might have been deleted
The system automaticaly deletes all feeds that have been inactive for more that 30 days during every maintenance cycle. Paused feeds are not visible by search engines and use hardware and software resources. It is also possible that you feed has been deleted due to high volume of updates or spamming.
We reserve the right to remove any feed that has been flagged for posting too often and twitter or ping.fm is refusing to update.
The short url for my feed items says "Feed Item not Imported"; what does it mean.
That's because when you added your feed the check box "Do not import current feed items" was checked. That box is checked by default so you can make a smooth transition from other services. If you made a mistake and want to import the existing feed items from your blog you can delete the feed and add it again.
Why do I need to register?
When you register to twitterlive you are allowed to authorize as many twitter accounts as you want and every feed channel you create is
linked to your twitter profile.
Do I need to enter my twitter username and password?
Not at all; this site uses Oauth to authenticate your credentials with
twitter. Oauth is an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. Below is the screen you will
see when you authorize this web site.
Do you support multiple twitter accounts?
Yes we do; from "my accounts" section you can authorize as many twitter accounts as you want. You can then select the account you want to use with the click of a button.
You current twitter account will be shown at the top of the window.
I have forgotten the OpenID that I used to create my account
As soon as you create an account using OpenID go to your settings and update
the email address field with your current email address, this way if you ever need to retrieve your user name or OAuth identity just go to the password recovery page
and enter your email. The system will email you your user name or OAuth identity and a new password; now you can simply login again and you can disregard the new password if you are using OAuth.
If you still have any problems retrieving your OpenID please contact us and we'll try to locate it for you.
Can I change my time zone?
Yes, you can do this from your "settings" page. It's important that you select the right time zone.
How do you score popular feed channels?
The channels are listed ordered by a scored that uses a simple formula that computes the number of replies with
the positive and negative votes. This formula gives more weight to positive votes than the number of replies. The system count the votes by twitter profile, so if
you have authorized several twitter account you can vote once for each profile.
Who is behind this service?
Twitterlive was built by a .Net web developer passionate about twitter, web services and social media in general. You can follow him @Sergio101.