Handy Twitter RSS feeds to bypass IFTTT Twitter trigger switchoff

Edit: 12 June 2013 - Twitter has now killed off all RSS feeds as far as I can tell.

Below are examples of the RSS versions of Twitter feeds which should work as an IFTTT trigger. It's no longer possible to use Twitter feeds directly, but from what I hear the RSS version of the Twitter feed works fine

You don't have to use IFTTT if you just want to save a bunch of tweets though - @bitoclass subscribes to the RSS feed of his own tweets using the Opera browser to store them. I've tried this out for my own favourites (using the 'Opera mail' option) and it seems to work fine, and it doesn't delete them once you've read them.

Because the RSS feeds are also web addresses (URLs) you can open them straight into a browser although they behave differently, for example I couldn't get them to open in Chrome - it wanted to download an RSS reader.

Replace the username or search term(s) with your own.

1. User: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/jobrodie.rss
   or https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=jobrodie
2. Mentions: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=@jobrodie 
3. Favourites: http://api.twitter.com/1/favorites.rss?screen_name=jobrodie
4. Search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=fluffy%20bunnies (%20 acts as 'space')
5. Hashtag search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23scicomm  (%23 acts as '#')

Twitter's actually switching off support for RSS feeds in March 2012 so this won't be a long-term solution. Hopefully someone will think of a fix before then!

There used to be an RSS feed icon on every page but Twitter removed those a year ago, however the RSS addresses (URLs) still worked, and versions of them work now.

Some example IFTTT recipes that can be customised, all use RSS feeds as the trigger
- note that I've not used or tested any of these

• RSS of Twitter trigger to Evernote and another version or this one (there are a few of these!)
• Twitter to Google Calendar
• Twitter favorites to Dropbox text file
• Tweets sent to SMS

Further reading

• IFTTT will be removing Twitter triggers, but here is a workaround (by Jamie Rubin @jamietr) - 21 September 2012
• New Twitter API drops supports for RSS, puts limits on third-party clients (by Mashable) - 5 September 2012
• Discussing API v1.1 - Twitter developers support forum (undated but thread of interest was posted four weeks ago at time of writing, ie at the beginning of September) - Ctrl+F to search for RSS:
  

  "URLs of that style are pretty outdated now. RSS as an output format is considered part of the API, and that URL is what we consider a "version 0" URL. It will also cease functioning on March 5, 2013. (emphrasis added by me)
  
  RSS and ATOM formats are relatively unused, and the OAuth requirement for all endpoints make utilizing them more difficult (or nearly impossible) for end-users. Tweets are better represented with the complete metadata available in the JSON responses available to you."

• Using free tools to capture a handful of tweets or a larger bunch (by me) - 19 July 2012
• insanely unwieldy massive list of tools to trap tweets, aka "A list of tools for finding or capturing tweets" (by me) - 30 May 2011, updated 21 September 2012

Further posts in the Twitter tips series...