I had noticed several people this week posting Twitter lists of people to follow for the Ukraine crisis (journalists/activists/subject matter experts). I know how to follow a Twitter list, but with the Twitter list comes all the other Twitter stuff (sponsored posts, other non-value added things). Since I had the tools available from creating other rivers of news (Old School Drummers, my own reading list and 1999.io bloggers) I followed this process to create a new river of news for following the Ukraine crisis (Politico’s Ukraine Reading List).
- For each person in the Twitter list, copied their Twitter URL
- Added an entry in a configuration JSON file (config.json) with the Twitter handle for each person and a RSS feed name based on the Twitter handle
- Uploaded the config.json file to my instance of tweetsToRss (Node app for creating an RSS feed for a Twitter user timeline)
- After 10 minutes, checked to see that the tweetsToRss app had created initial RSS feeds
- After another 10 miniutes, checked to see that my cron job had started copying those RSS feeds to a web hosting location
- Created a new text file (politicoUkraine.txt) with URLs for all of the RSS feeds, then added that text file to the lists folder in my River5 installation (RSS feed reader)
- After 10 minutes, checked my River5 console and saw the tab showing those feeds in a River5 file format that I could use for displaying a public river of news
- Used the files for the Old School Drummers river of news as a base to create the new river of news
If you are interested in more technical details, check out my book Set Up Your Own Platform, which includes a set of chapters on setting up a virtual server and step-by-step details on how to set up the tools to create and manage your own public news rivers.