Where’s RSS for Twitter and Facebook Pages

Earlier this year, Twitter and Facebook removed RSS (Really Simple Syndication).  While proprietary sites such as Twitter and Facebook, with complex user information, are moving towards using JSON and their own API for others to grab information off it’s site, RSS is still critical for many simpler web applications.

For developing some WordPress Themes and custom plugins, I love using SimplePie, the RSS parser for PHP. To mix, match, slice, and dice several RSS and other aggregation feeds together, Yahoo! Pipes is a great tool.

Facebook

Facebook quickly added RSS back for Facebook Pages.  Just scroll down the left sidebar on any Facebook Page to find it’s RSS link:

 

 

Twitter

For twitter, the RSS is harder to find. It is the following address, modified for the user you want to subscribe via RSS. Replace {USERNAME} with the user’s twitter handle:
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name={USERNAME}