Twitter feeding Tweets into this website

A Blog from Mike Irving, Software Developer

Twitter feeding Tweets into this website
By Mike Irving - Published: 23/6/2009

You may have noticed the little red bird that has appeared at the bottom right of this website.

What's that all about? You may well ask.

Well, next to the little birdie, should be my latest "Tweet" - a post / status update on the Social Networking Service "Twitter".

I have a profile on the site, featuring the little red bird, as Mike Irving - Web Developer.

I have been updating it regularly with things I have been doing in my work as a Web Developer.

Twitter Status Updates, or Tweets, are only a maximum of 140 characters in length, which keeps them to the point but also keeps them regular.

As the "blog" entries on my website are not so frequent, I though it would be a good idea to add my latest tweet to the website automatically, to keep the website fresh and current - something that Search Engines like too, so is a good SEO tool.

Very little Web Design / Development was required to add the Tweet Feed.

Infact, it all runs in JavaScript, in your browser. I opted for this system for 2 reasons:

Firstly - It was quick and simple to add in, based on a freely available piece of Twitter JavaScript.

Secondly - Implementing a "Server Side" system would have been more time consuming and would impact the page-load time of pages on the website, which is not good in the eyes of Search Engines.

Follow Me on Twitter

Update June 2013:
You may have noticed the aforementioned Tweets are now gone. This is due to Twitter retiring v1.0 of their Developer API, rendering such services defunct. I may recode it one day, in API 1.1, but for now it is gone.