Auto-Tweet your Google Reader Shared Items without using any third-party services

Google Reader is one of the most popular Atom and RSS feed aggregator service from Google. It allows you to share the articles you like with your friends (followers). You may want to link your Twitter account with Google Reader so that whenever you share something, the same will be shared on your Twitter stream as well. I wrote a script back in Jan 2009 to semi-automate the same. But, the script has stopped working as Twitter supports only OAuth authentication now. There are lots of third-party apps / plugins available to do the same. But, you will have to connect to those services with your Google / Twitter credentials. Here is a simple way to auto-tweet your Google Reader Shared Items without using any third party service.

Steps to Auto-Tweet your Google Reader Shared Items

1. Feed Discovery. Whenever you share items on Google Reader, you will have a Public atom feed associated with your account. To know your feed URL, go to “Your stuff” > “Shared Items”. “Your Shared Items” page will open up. Click on the “show details” link at the right top corner. Details will show the Feed URL associated with your shared items. Note: Make sure your items are public. Click on the “sharing settings” to change the settings of your shared items.

2. Burning your Feed. The next step is to burn your feed. You can use Google’s FeedBurner. Go to http://feedburner.google.com. Copy / Paste the Feed URL (from step#1) in the ‘Burn a feed right this instant’ text box. Click on ‘Next’. In the next screen, FeedBurner will ask you to provide the feed title and an address for the feed. After providing the details, click on ‘Next’. FeedBurner will burn the feed for you. It will show a screen to setup FeedBurner stats. You can do it later. Click on ‘Skip directly to feed management’.

3. Linking with your Twitter Account.  The last step is to link your Twitter to the feed which is just burnt. Go to the ‘Publicize’ tab and select ‘Socialize’ option from the sidebar. Click on ‘Add a Twitter account’ button. This will open the Twitter page asking you to sign in to Twitter if you have not signed in already. Then, it will ask you to authorize access to your Twitter account for Google. Allow access to Google. After adding the Twitter account, you can configure few settings like formatting options, item count, items filtering, etc. After choosing the desired setting, click on ‘Activate’ to activate the service. That’s all. FeedBurner will periodically check for new feeds from Google Reader shared items and post them on Twitter stream automatically. Note: Your twitter account is linked directly with the Google account without having to use any third-party service.

This is what I would recommend – Read it on Reader, Share it on Twitter. Enjoying reading and happy sharing.

-- Varun