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Feedurner "Socialize" RSS feed posting to Twitter deprecated

FeedBurner announced today that the "Socialize" service that links to Twitter and automatically tweets new posts has been deprecated. Existing Twitter connections will removed from Feedburner after October 30, 2019.

FeedBurner is Google's rarely-updated service for distributing blog and other feeds. If you have "subscribe by email" enabled for your Blogger blog, that is managed through FeedBurner.

Linking FeedBurner to a Twitter account has been broken for some time now, so this will only affect you if you set up "Socialize" posting to Twitter a long time ago.

If you aren't sure whether you have Twitter linked to your FeedBurner account, you can check:

1. Sign in to FeedBurner (feedburner.google.com)

2. Click your blog or feed name

3. Click the Publicize tab at the top

4. Click Socialize on the left menu

5. If you have a Twitter account connected, that will show on that page.

Automatically Share Blog Posts to Twitter

Google and Blogger do not offer any way to automatically share your blog posts to Twitter or other social media platforms. There are several third party services you can use to do that. Just look for an "RSS to Twitter" option.

Note that some social media management platforms (such as HootSuite) have removed or limited RSS to Twitter posting, due to Twitter automated posting policy changes.

I don't currently auto-post to Twitter, so I can't recommend any specific services. However, if you are looking for a service, you might want to start by checking out these free services:
  1. IFTTT : Online automation tool with user-created "Applets". Free for personal use.
  2. Zapier: Online automation tool. Free accounts can create up to 5 "Zaps". Some social media management platforms like Buffer and Friends+Me integrate with Zapier.
  3. dlvr.it : Social media auto-posting service. Free accounts can link two social media profiles, with up to 3 posts per day.
  4. circleboom: Twitter account management service. Free accounts can post up to 3 posts per day.
  5. Jetpack: If your blog is on WordPress, you can use the Jetpack Publicize module to share posts to Twitter.
Announcement: Socialize Service Deprecation

Comments

  1. Very disappointing. I've had issues with this for months so it's not really a surprise. One blog it's worked fine (and is still working), but another, after I tried to edit the Twitter connection, lost all functionality and returned "not found" errors every time I loaded the page. I'm guessing Feedburner itself will be shut down soon, and the email subscription feature settings will be moved to Blogger settings.

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    1. I don't expect Feedburner to shut down any time soon. But I think other, likely rarely used features may be retired. This wasn't really a surprise since it hasn't worked properly in a long time, and changes to Twitter over the past couple of years seem to be designed to discourage automatic posting. YouTube also removed auto-posting to Twitter this year.

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  2. The beginning of the end of Feedburner? I'm actually surprised it stuck around for so long, especially considering Google Reader was shut down long ago.

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  3. It's almost always better to provide some commentary or context when posting a link, imo.

    I know this is sort of an "eat your spinach, it's good for you" message, but if you've been relying on Feedburner to autopost you may want to try manual posting (with comment) and see if your engagement improves.

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    Replies
    1. I use IFTTT to autopost to Twitter and I also share manually each blog post at least another time at a different date and hour. I get almost the same engagement, a bit more if I attach an image to the manual tweet.

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  4. A great day with this great article! I have learned many useful ideas from this blog. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete

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