Replacing Deprecated Timeline Search Widget

[robworley]

So, we have Twitter Timeline Widget that uses a #hashtag search term. We have an email today warning us …

Your Twitter timeline widget could be impacted by our decision to discontinue support for search timelines. Please read our announcement for complete details on this change and how to best address it.

Linking to this announcement page Deprecating widget settings

The announcement page prescribes the use of https://publish.twitter.com/

However, that toolset doesn’t have a search timeline.

Does anyone know of a solution?

[andypiper]

We’d recommend potentially using a Collection timeline instead and curating that via the API or TweetDeck.

[cogdog]

The hashtag option in https://publish.twitter.com is not producing any output, here is a test page with the code copied for a friend’s hashtag and the demo #ILoveTwitter one–

Colouring Collection Widgets

Nothing. Bubkas.

I guess no one loves twitter.

I have to say, as someone who works with educators, not developers, the information and documentation on the change for search widgets is horrible, confusing, nd generating a lot of panic mong teachers trying to figure out these changes,

I’d give you a D grade on how this major change has been promoted. I got one email from one twitter account, and I have about 40 registered old school widgets.

[OnlineCrsLady]

When I did the hashtag (and I tried via the hashtag itself, plus all the URLs I could generate from search and by clicking on active hashtags in tweets), all I got was a BUTTON. That was the only option available: it let me customize the button with a prepopulated tweet text, but it was definitely not a timeline. Just a use-this-to-tweet-something button prepoulated with the hashtag.

Then, I tried going in through the timeline icon on publish.twitter.com to see if maybe that would work, but it was clear that no hashtags were welcome there.’

I really am afraid that unless people pony up money for a search API (?), then no more live hashtag widgets.
But I hope I am wrong!

[ashishsingh184]

Hi,
We are using api: “https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name={0}&include_rts=1&exclude_replies=1&count={1}” in our code to render twitter timelines on our webpage. Does this deprecating timeline search widget will affect our twitter feeds rendering on our page?

[wizjo]

Hi @ashishsingh184: api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json will continue to work, and not affected by this Search Timeline widget deprecation at all! Let us know if you have more questions!

[wizjo]

Hi @OnlineCrsLady @cogdog and @robworley, really appreciate your feedback here!

To clarify, search Timeline is never supported in publish.twitter.com, only Tweet Buttons display option is supported for “hashtag” (unlike “handle” where you have both Embedded Timeline and Tweet Buttons to choose from).

But to address your concern, may I ask would a collection, profile, list or likes Timeline suit your use case? Once you have a collection (see Curate a Collection of Tweets using TweetDeck or API), profile, list (see How to use Twitter lists), or likes (associated with a certain Twitter account), you can grab the code snippet to embed them using publish.twitter.com.

If not, I would recommend that you consider using the RESTful Search API which is a bit more involved in terms of implementation. In other words, it’s not as simple as copying and pasting embed code from publish.twitter.com; but it gives you the most control over how Tweets are rendered.

Over the years while we actively supported Search Timeline widgets, we found the usage of them not so high compared to other types of Timelines (collection, profile, list and likes) and the engineering cost for maintaining Search Timeline widgets quite expensive. So we hope by deprecating widget settings and Search Timeline widgets, we can focus better on improving existing embed options and investing new ones to keep up with your evolving use cases.

Hope this helps!

[OnlineCrsLady]

Thank you for the clarification; the engineering cost of search as opposed to other types of widgets is what I expected was the reason for this change.

As someone who has used all the types of Twitter widgets, including search/hashtag widgets, I would be glad to pay for some kind of premium account, as I do for other tools I use in my work as an online instructor (I pay for premium services at Diigo, Flickr, Inoreader, Padlet, and Flipgrid). I wish Twitter offered something like that because, for teachers like myself, learning how to use the API is not a viable alternative, although I would gladly pay for a premium service. Twitter offers something of real value to me, and I use it every day in my work as a teacher.

I do appreciate the free widget services that you are continuing to support, but I am really going to miss the hashtag widgets. Hashtags are one of the most powerful features of Twitter, and hashtag widgets were one of the most useful tools you offered in my opinion.

Thank you again for confirming that this really is the end of hashtag widgets… although, I will hope that maybe, somehow, they will be available again in the future.

[wizjo]

Thanks @OnlineCrsLady for the feedback!

It’s important for us to know that you prefer the Search Timeline widgets and would even consider paying for a premium feature like this. We will take that into consideration in prioritizing our future work.

But for others out there, do please give collection, profile, list, and likes Timeline widgets a try!

[OnlineCrsLady]

For anyone who is interested, I wrote up an example of doing a collections-hashtag widget here at the Canvas Community:
https://community.canvaslms.com/people/laurakgibbs/blog/2018/04/07/twitter4canvas-tweetdeck-collection-widgets

It’s not at all the same as a live hashtag search widget, but for curating a topic, it will be useful. And if we do not have hashtag search widgets anymore, the only solution is going to be manual curation… a real step backwards, unfortunately. I will hope for a better solution in the future!

[ashishsingh184]

Hi @wizjo,
Thanks for your prompt reply. The information was valuable for me.

[cogdog]

Over the years while we actively supported Search Timeline widgets, we found the usage of them not so high compared to other types of Timelines (collection, profile, list and likes) and the engineering cost for maintaining Search Timeline widgets quite expensive. So we hope by deprecating widget settings and Search Timeline widgets, we can focus better on improving existing embed options and investing new ones to keep up with your evolving use cases.

I’m not sure who you spoke to when you arrived at this conclusion; there are tens of thousands of educators, projects who extensively use hashtags as a means to draw participation around projects, classes, community efforts, connecting beyond the classroom.

Many, many, many of them use twitter hashtag widgets on their blogs to show recent activity around a hashtag. Over the years, I must have created more than 30 for different classes and projects.

Let me be clear- collections/moments have uses but require manual curation and are by no means a substitute for the way educators use hashtags. Almost none of them are going to be able to figure out the API approach.

This is devastating and almost none of them are aware of this change (it seems to have been communicated via developer channels), and those that have heard have no idea what this means.

I can guess that for Wordpress, some developers will create new widgets that work with the API.

But this has been twitter’s decision, so none of us have any say. Just know that it is not an insignificant change and it has not been communicated to the people it will affect.

[cogdog]

The docs say that the current widgets can be created through end of May and will die end of July.

But it’s already broken.

This hashtag #selfieunselfie has tweets

https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23selfieunselfie

but the old school widgets come up empty:

It’s not weird its effing broken, When I click check for tweets I see tweets.

So you are screwing people over even before the announced deadline. This is for a colleague’s Fullbright art installation and she is going crazy trying to figure out why something that should work is not.

[andypiper]

The search timeline widget only supports displaying Tweets posted within the last seven days. This has always been the case. In the situation you’re describing, there are no Tweets on that hashtag within that past 7 day window, so this is the expected behaviour. There’s no change to our announced timeline for deprecation here.

Thank you.

[wizjo]

Hi @cogdog: Please see @andypiper’s comments on Search Timeline only displaying Tweets posted within the last seven days. This is not a bug, nor a recent change, and we have been communicating this behavior in response to forum questions in the past.

We are sorry to hear that you rely heavily on hashtag Timelines for your blogs, and won’t be able to invest in the alternative approach using Search API. Please know that we don’t make such a deprecation decision lightly. Rather, the decision backed by usage data for each widget embed type that we observe. And Search Timeline widget is just too expensive an engineering effort given the net benefits it offers to developers and their end users.

Please give collection, profile, list, and like Timeline widgets a try!

[cogdog]

My bad, it was not my content, someone else’s, and I missed seeing the tweets were old. I sent her directions for how to create a collection. Thanks

[OnlineCrsLady]

Alan is absolutely right about this: teachers use hashtags at Twitter in all kinds of important ways, and the communication about this change at Twitter has been handled very poorly.

I feel culpable in that I have been actively promoting the use of Twitter hashtag widgets for educators over the past several years… and now those widgets are going to break.

And there is no easy solution because, as Alan points out, the manual curation that is being offered as an alternative is something completely different from the purpose of having a hashtag widget, which is to let the conversation shape itself via the hashtag.

[system]

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