With Windows Live Wave 4, along with a bunch of improvements, there were a few setbacks, noticeably with the absence of Twitter as a Windows Live Profile partner. Unfortunately, due apparently to some changes in Twitter’s terms of service, Windows Live is unable to connect up to Twitter, and so while we were able in Wave 3 to get Twitter updates right from our Windows Live Profile, that’s no longer the case. Until that situation is resolved, we just have to get a little sneaky, that’s all:
Over at WinLiveBlogs.com (a new blog project headed up by our friend Scott Lovegrove, with blogs by Scott, Colin Brown, Greg Edwards, and “Technogran”), Greg offers up instructions on how to use the blog/rss workaround to get Twitter back in your profile stream. Basically, you copy your rss address for your Twitter account and include it in a Blog/RSS feed through Windows Live Profile. Greg has all the details on his post, check it out. (You could also connect Twitter to your Facebook account, which will bring in your Twitter messages through Facebook. Of course then you’re potentially spamming your FB friends with your Twitter messages).
But you don’t have to use this trick for Twitter, you can use the Blog/RSS feed to add any feed to your Windows Live Profile, including LiveSide’s, of course. Our RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/liveside, so basically just go to your Windows Live Home Page, and in the Messenger Social section click on “Add”, and then “Find more services…”:
Find the Blog/RSS service (at the bottom of “All”), add in our RSS feed, and Save.
That way, even if you don’t have LiveSide as a Windows Live friend, you should begin seeing our RSS feed posts show up in your stream. Of course you can add us as a friend (deador@live.com or click on the Windows Logo in our sidebar under Social Networks), and links to our latest posts should start showing up in your “Messenger Social” (What’s New feed).
The problem with all of this is, as I’m finding out, is that you can only add one RSS feed to your profile (what’s up with that?), so it’s either/or with Twitter and LiveSide (or any other RSS feed). Hopefully Windows Live and Twitter will get their differences worked out soon, and we can forget about the workarounds.