[Update August 20, 2014] – I’ve not actually tried this, but found a new article on How to Create RSS Feeds in Twitter using Google Script.
[Update March 4, 2013] – As of March 5th, 2013, twitter will no longer support unauthenticated feeds of any kind and will be dropping support for RSS altogether (meaning you can only get JSON feeds). Therefore, you will need to make your own (see comments for one suggestion) or use an app to follow specific feeds.
Hashtag and Keyword Search
So, almost every single tutorial told me to just find the magical RSS feed button to get a twitter search, but my understanding is that this button no longer exists! (or it exists for some people and not others, magical…).
So, after much searching, I finally figured it out by changing twitter to the old layout and playing around with the link I found. Sociable has updated their post on this topic, so I’ve updated the cheat sheet a bit:
You may need to use search.atom instead of rss depending on your reader.
[UPDATED: Apr 21, 2012]
Hashtag search: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%23YourSearch
User mention search: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%40UserName
To a User: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=to%3AUserName
From a User: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=from%3AUserName
Keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=Your+Keywords
* use OR for any of the word you type, so Your%20OR%20Keywords
* use double quotes for example phrases, so “Your Search”
* use a hyphen for the equivalent of NOT, so –keywordLanguage (for English): http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=lang:en
* to find the two letter language code, just use Twitter’s advance search, select the language of your choice, hit Search, and see what Twitter usesLocation: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?geocode=latitude%2Clongitude%2C25km
(use mi for miles, max 1000km or 1000mi)Location + keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=Your+Keywords%20geocode=latitude%2Clongitude%2C25km
(For a hashtag, add %23 in front of your keyword.)To find the latitude and longitude, try a site like itouchmap.
Check out the Sociable blog post for more on even more complex location searches.
[Added February 6, 2013] By default, you will only get 10-12 results. If you want to get results farther back, add “&rpp=Number” where the number is a maximum of 180 with results no older than 6-9 days.
Making Complex Searches
Here’s my tip on generating more complex searches: use Twitter’s advance search, see what Twitter comes up with in the search bar, then copy/paste their query and stick it after: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=
The only exception is the geocode, because Twitter has “near this place” instead of exact geolocation.
User Timelines & Favourites
If you’re interested in a user’s timeline, many readers will allow you to use the standard profile page link: http://twitter.com/#!/username . If for some reason that doesn’t work, try this:
[Updated: October 16, 2012] With the deprecation of the older API, you now have to specify you’re using API 1 (as opposed to 1.1) if you want to use RSS through statuses. If you prefer not to, then I suggest using the ‘from user’ search (above).
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=User
Replace ‘User’ with the usernameSimilarly, for favorites, use:
http://api.twitter.com/1/favorites.rss?screen_name=User
Twitter List
If you’re interested in creating RSS feeds to a list instead of just a single person, try going through David Calhoun’s The incredibly painful way of getting an RSS feed of a Twitter list.