It was bound to happen. I automated and synced too much perhaps.
If you have not synced accounts before let me explain. When I bookmark an item in Diigo, for instance, FriendFeed would pick up this bookmark using the Diigo RSS feed to know when a new item is posted and then shares it to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other accounts as I have selected. It is great for being able to post to multiple sites without actually posting to all of these sites. Often when I share an item on Twitter or Facebook, I am not actually logged in to these accounts. Instead I am simply clicking a button to share the item. I use Google Reader to create literature searches at work and when I see something I want to post I click ‘share’ in Google Reader. Bam its on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Simple and able to use at work. It is also nice for someone who times many of their posts to display during working hours. This way, I can be “online” with many of my fellow medlibs (medical librarians) even while I am at work.
Why post to multiple places? I post to multiple social media sites since everyone uses different sites at different times. Some medlibs are hardcore tweeters, while others prefer Facebook. It really is just a preference. In an effort to make sure I am communicating with as many medlibs as I can I post on multiple sites. I could not do everything I do online without syncing RSS feeds. I even use it in the library to create customized literature alerts (more on this in a future post).
So what happened?
Well it all started when a new player entered the Social Media field– Google Plus. In true geek fashion I was ecstatic about this new shiny toy, but I was not thrilled to have yet another place to post. So I immediately tried to find ways to auto post either to Google or have Google Plus posts auto post to all of the other sites I use. I tinkered, I toyed, I tried, and… I made changes. This was my downfall.
Somewhere in the changes I opted to have Google Buzz auto post to FriendFeed. This may appear as an odd way to sync Google Plus by using Buzz; however, if you look closely they are connected in some ways. For instance, if I click on a post from Buzz I am taken to Google Plus but these post do not show up in my Google Plus stream. Anyway I was desperate I was trying everything to make this work.
Then trouble really started. Since Google Buzz was now auto posting to FriendFeed, and FriendFeed was already set-up to post to Google Buzz it created a loop. For over a month there have been tons of posts duplicating on my Google Buzz and FriendFeed. Some posts were posting 10 times on each site.
Why did I not notice? Well in the attempt to sync Google Plus, FriendFeed lost connection with Twitter and Facebook. Maybe it was the loop which shut down the connection or maybe the connection needed to be refreshed. I am not sure which happened, but something happened.
I first noticed the issue when my shared items and bookmarked items were not displaying on Twitter and Facebook. It wasn’t everything, just some things. Odd. So I started investigating. I immediately found the loop between Google Buzz and FriendFeed. I disconnected the loop. Then I went to work trying to reconnect Twitter and Facebook to FriendFeed. I tried many times.
FriendFeed has actually been abandoned by the programmers. So when I tried to reconnect Twitter using the FriendFeed tools Advanced Twitter Settings, it would let me authorize FriendFeed to access Twitter but would not log into Twitter on the FriendFeed site. The same issue was happening with Facebook. Nothing I tried worked. I emailed the FriendFeed help desk but I don’t expect a response. If anyone has fixed this issue please let me know how you fixed it. I am curious to hear the fix.
Great, now syncing wasn’t just failing… it was completely broken. After grumbling for a while, I set to work fixing the issue.
First option, a simple fix. I decided to try TwitterFeed. Simply take a RSS feed and set-up your TwitterFeed preferences. It is very easy to set-up. The only problem, it starts duplicating old posts. Imagine an RSS feed of your shared items in Google Reader. This is where I have gone in and shared items over the last few years. Yeah, Twitterfeed started reposting all of these. Not good!
Next, Hootsuite. I heard great things about this site. You can schedule tweets, and post RSS feeds, kind of. The issue here is the pubdate field in the RSS feed. If it isn’t formatted exactly right then it will not work. Since I am reposting items from Google Reader, say @eagledawg blog post from last week, then the pubdate is formatted different for each site and may not be recent. I plugged all of the feeds into Yahoo Pipes to combine the feeds, edit the pubdate for all post to the current date, and then output the feeds. Sounds simple enough. Did it work? Nope. Hootsuit will only publish 5 items and will only check every hour. Hootsuit is also very picky with RSS feeds. If the feed doesn’t conform exactly, then it will not work.
Sigh… at this point I decided I would use Hootsuit as a last resort. I really did not want to fuss with manipulating the Yahoo Pipe so it could correctly format countless RSS feeds with different coding/structure to Hootsuit specifications. At this point the added work & time did not seem worth it to only be able to post 5 items at a time with no trickle effect to make sure all items post.
I stumbled around the internet for a while looking for another solution.
Tumblr previously offered the feature of importing RSS feeds as posts but dropped it about two months ago. If you currently use this feature of Tumblr don’t fret, you’ve been grandfathered in… for now.
At this point I was reaching my wits end. All this trouble to auto post on different sites. But I wasn’t giving up. “Never give up, never surrender!”
Finally, Dlvr.it was me deliverance!
After taking a break, I started searching again for an alternative solution and found dlvr.it. At first I was skeptical. I kept thinking there is no way dlvr.it offers so many features for free. I mean unlimited RSS feeds, detailed analytics, option for Google analytics, scheduling of RSS push, check feeds every 15 minutes, trickle feeds throughout the day, schedule messages, and more.
There has to be a catch or bug. Nope. So far so good. I will say it is a little slow to post to Facebook but otherwise I really like this service. If you have it post several items at a time they will post back to back. I know when I see 5+ updates in a row from the same person, I am less likely to read all of the posts. Then make sure to turn on the trickle feature. This way if you share 20 items in Google Reader in 10 minutes those 20 items will all be shared but spaced out over time. No more worrying about overloading your followers, as long as you set it up correctly. Keep this in mind when setting up dlvr.it schedules.
In a way I am glad FriendFeed stopped working, otherwise I would not have gone searching and found dlvr.it. So far it provides more options, control and management of my social media presence. For now this is all I can say about dlvr.it. I don’t want to go into a more detailed review until I have used it for a week or two to really test the schedule and trickle functions.
Suffice it to say if your Friendfeed goes bonkers and stops working, like mine, don’t panic– there is a better option, dlvr.it.
