How To Add Twitter To Google Wave

by Danny Sullivan on October 1, 2009

Yes, the Google Wave invites are going out. All logged in? Now it’s time to start tweeting from Google Wave. Here’s how.

The only Twitter client I know of is called Tweety the Twitbot. Today, I’ve also seen it called Twave, though the application itself still doesn’t seem to use that name.

I used Tweety in the Google Wave sandbox preview and completely forgot how I added it back then. So I did some searching and came across a tweet from @oplura explaining that getting Tweety going is as easy as adding a contact. So let’s do it, with pictures.

Go to your contacts window and click the + sign at the bottom to add a new contact:

Enter this address:

tweety-wave@appspot.com

Now make a new wave. Click the + symbol to add a new participant to it. Add Tweety:

Next you’ll get an authenticating message:

A new window will open to connect Wave to your Twitter account:

After you sign in successfully, you’ll get a message confirming this, and then the window will close.

Back in your wave, push the “Done” button if you’re still seeing the authentication message. Then you’ll see this:

Enter your tweet into the top box (first arrow in the screenshot) and push update to send. Keep in mind that it won’t count down the 140 characters. If you go long, it won’t warn you.

Below the tweet box, you’ll see tweets from others (second, lower arrow in the screenshot). You might try reloading the page, if it looks like the names of those tweeting aren’t showing up correctly.

After that, well, I find that the box doesn’t seem to update. Maybe that will improve as Wave stabilizes during the current round of invites or as the app improves or who knows?

{ 73 comments }

1 Kiluka October 1, 2009 at 4:32 am: Do you have any Wave invite for me ? I’m desparate…
2 Danny Sullivan October 1, 2009 at 5:49 am: I don’t, sorry!
3 Gabriel Varaljay October 1, 2009 at 5:51 am: Thanks for information. Cool.
4 Tim Laughlin October 1, 2009 at 5:58 am: Thanks for the quick post on how to do this. I just added it to my Wave. Same results that you are seeing regarding no updates.
5 Eric Hellman October 1, 2009 at 7:16 am: Thanks for the install help, but I’m having trouble figuring out how I would use Twitter in a wave. Any ideas?
6 HichamD October 1, 2009 at 11:47 am: Well it looks like you guys are having a lot of fun with this toy.

One day i will this wave toy too
7 Richard Burckhardt October 1, 2009 at 12:29 pm: Same here. All those “friends” and not a single invite.

Bummer.

But, thanks for the info, Danny. I’ll save it for later when Google starts letting the peasants in!
8 Andrew Terry October 1, 2009 at 12:49 pm: Beware though, if you add Tweety-wave and another contact (or contacts) to the same wave, that contact will be able to tweet on your behalf… So, if you add Tweety-wave, and then make that wave public, World+Dog can tweet using your credentials…
9 Dave Peck October 1, 2009 at 4:21 pm: Yep I cant get it to update either. Install goes fine..cant reply
10 calvin October 1, 2009 at 9:54 pm: thanks for posting this…until i read your post, i didnt see where i could update my tweets bc of the long list of updates, until i scrolled back up
11 orli October 2, 2009 at 12:19 am: Another way to tweet from wave:
http://twitpic.com/jvx4i
12 Thomas Power October 2, 2009 at 12:35 am: the twitter window to validate account didn’t open am I missing something?
13 Fairflow October 2, 2009 at 12:55 pm: try replaying the wave you started to activate Tweety-wave. Havoc! This thing has reallllly serious ways of messing up. Fun isn’t it?
14 AA October 2, 2009 at 10:23 pm: May be someone will come up with kick ass Twitter Wave client? For now, this Wave extension is not worth it.
15 Brian McKenna October 3, 2009 at 9:09 pm: Since I started using the developer’s sandbox, the Twitter bot has never updated the wave with new Tweets.

Sorry, but it doesn’t seem to be just because of the system load or anything. I just don’t think it is programmed to update.
16 Graeme Harrison October 3, 2009 at 9:25 pm: Thanks for posting that (clear) tip – much appreciated!
17 Josh Fialkoff October 8, 2009 at 1:51 pm: Is there a way to get your Twitter stream to feed into Google Wave (so that you can use as a Twitter reader)?
Thanks,
Josh
18 Erik Craddock October 8, 2009 at 8:48 pm: I’m not sure how I did it but I was able to get Tweety to update my twitter status. At first it did not appear to have worked. I added text pressed update and it seemed like it did nothing. I checked the twitter website and sure enough no update. I clicked update again several time for good measure and moved on. It wasn’t until later when checking the twitter site again did I notice that it did in fact work. So it does work but not very well.
19 Alejandra October 13, 2009 at 12:49 pm: Thank you! I just got my invite today and I was looking for something interesting to do while my contact lists gets populated with my friends and twitter is perfect!
20 Zach Ellerbrook October 13, 2009 at 8:55 pm: I had to click “Done” on my Blip, then I clicked “Update” on the finished blip.

I’ve checked a couple times and so far I don’t have a double-post, so I think that’s how you do it.
21 Arnaud October 14, 2009 at 3:28 am: Strange thing, after adding the Twitbot to my wave, I have no authenticating message popup..
22 François October 14, 2009 at 7:44 am: Nor do I have an authentication message, and even no form to update (no button either).
Only as if it was human contact.

http://tweety-wave.appspot.com/about is a 404.

Maybe they move it.
23 youfoundjake October 14, 2009 at 7:46 pm: Thanks for posting this Danny, just got my invite, and i remember seeing this post, so I came back to find out how you did it.
I’m also experiencing the lack of update that you and others mentioned, but oh well, its all beta.
geez, if your not on fire, your drowning, whats up with the crazy weather down there?
24 Daniel Tiriba October 15, 2009 at 6:58 am: I’ve tested Tweety… So bad thing!
The best way to tweet from wave is by inserting the twitter gadget.
25 Daniel October 16, 2009 at 11:08 am: Thanks a lot, this was helpful!
26 Nawang October 17, 2009 at 3:07 am: Please send me an invitation to Google wave at nawang.dorji@gmail.com. Thanx!!
27 pskyyy October 25, 2009 at 7:20 am: Thanks for the Twitter feed application. How does this work in connection with Google? Someone help me out with this one…..
28 Kadem October 29, 2009 at 7:12 am: Thanks for the quick post on how to do this
29 Indranama October 30, 2009 at 7:10 pm: yeah, this article was helpful for me, as I just started Wave.
Thanks
30 Rich Benvin October 31, 2009 at 7:43 am: Thanks! That was easy. We need more of these simple step-by-step instructions for other useful add-on and apps. Post yours at Wavelab.com too.
31 Dr.Ravichandra November 3, 2009 at 12:36 am: I got a invite today after a long wait…and using tweety now…thanx for this idea…
32 Shane November 7, 2009 at 6:10 pm: I don’t know but I just got invited to Google wave today, installed the tweet application and I can see other peoples tweets in my Google Wave. Maybe they are still improving that tweet application for Google Wave.
33 Neil Ferree November 8, 2009 at 10:05 am: Initially, this sounded like a good idea but when you think about all the junk that finds its way onto Twitter, I would not want to open the door for all this useless data dumping into my Wave.

THIS IS WHY there needs to be a rules based access extension built to that the Wave creator can control who gets access to a Wave and who can add / remove people from the Wave or does such an extension already exist?
34 Fauzan Emmerling November 9, 2009 at 5:48 am: Can I post my wave status from twitter instead?
35 hmikail November 9, 2009 at 3:24 pm: “Note: Any participant on this wave can tweet on behalf of the authenticated Twitter user”….luckily i was testing gwave with an old friend..and his message went up on my twitter account..

overall…no question that google wave has a bright future…but the over hype on social media and twitter…just over hyped!
36 Muhammad Yasin November 10, 2009 at 6:17 pm: Andrew Terry ….. thx for the security info…

I got google wave today and this was the first social gadget to play with.

It seems to me that many other people might have started the same way.
“Tweet using Wave”

Plz keep posting about other useful gadgets for google wave.
37 Fred Weiner November 11, 2009 at 12:09 am: This Twitter suggestion did not work. Do you need invites to accomplish the addition of twitter?
38 uditha Isuranga November 11, 2009 at 1:11 am: yeah! this really helpful to me
39 Doubledown Tandino November 12, 2009 at 5:54 am: You forgot to mention that the moment that you install this into a wave, it completely destroys it with endless twitter spam and total junk tweets.

My advice… don’t use this add-on. Instead… use twitter.
40 Google Wave Forum November 12, 2009 at 1:06 pm: Thanks for this – I just covered it on my forum.
41 jc November 13, 2009 at 3:56 am: Hi, I have a problem with authentication. When I was using Firefox, It says connection is untrusted. I tried using Chrome and still there’s a problem with authentication. It says that the frame was blocked due to some insecure content. I was hoping you could help me with this. Thanks.
42 jc November 13, 2009 at 6:40 am: Hi, Its me again. I found the solution already using IE. This blog is of great help. Have a nice day.
43 waveman November 13, 2009 at 8:40 am: Should of added my link to Google Wave Forum
44 Aidan Hughes November 13, 2009 at 5:31 pm: Excellent and very useful, i only have to keep one window active now.
45 Ruslan November 14, 2009 at 1:01 am: Any Idea how come my tweets are looking like the first tweet in the picture above?? Like all default and with the T as the avatar?? I tried reloading the page.. Is it just a bug??
46 poinck November 14, 2009 at 5:47 am: I just see the tweets of tweety: not the one i am following. Any ideas what went wrong?
47 RWLindell November 15, 2009 at 4:31 am: If you’re desperate for a wave you can always go to ebay. The going rate for a well rated seller is $15. I’m not selling invites this is just a PSA.
48 Chuck November 20, 2009 at 7:41 pm: Cool bot for wave, thanks for the clear directions for adding the bot, now I can tweet from wave.
49 Steve Wilder November 21, 2009 at 12:36 pm: I cannot get it to Authenticate. It shows a broken link next to Authenticating and nothing happens.
50 little wang November 21, 2009 at 10:07 pm: I am in China,I can’t use “Authenticating…”!
51 Carlos November 22, 2009 at 10:05 pm: It dosent work, when you say it will appear the new window it never appears, and i cant use tweet the twitbox
52 robb November 24, 2009 at 4:42 am: i just got my wave invitation and this tweet bot works wonderful.
thx for the article.
53 Jhony November 27, 2009 at 8:52 am: Thanks a lot…
54 Justin November 28, 2009 at 9:58 pm: i tried today to add this web app, it doesn’t work. no pop-up is popping up
55 Prashant yv November 30, 2009 at 11:12 am: Thanks! I just got the invite from Google today!
56 William November 30, 2009 at 12:29 pm: Thanks, your web site was very useful
57 Estrella December 1, 2009 at 4:41 am: Didn’t know about this, thanks!
58 Sunita Gurung December 2, 2009 at 8:14 am: Thankyou
59 Mark December 3, 2009 at 4:51 am: any one need a google wavea account please let me know and send your email id to me….

regards
Mark
60 Ms. Freeman December 3, 2009 at 1:06 pm: This post was such a great help, I just got on Google Wave the other day so I am learning my way around. Thank you for spelling it out for us newbies.
61 Ragmack December 5, 2009 at 5:44 am: Thx for the post. I have 2 wave invite left, hit me up on twitter (ragmack) if anyone need one.
62 Karen M. Henton December 5, 2009 at 11:06 am: Hey thanks for this advice! That Tweetie robot was a bit tough to figure out at first, but then it turned out cool once I got Firefox to stop blocking the pop up window so it could authenticate. Still can’t see all the avatars and the time line, home page, etc, guess things’ll take time once all the invites and preview stage goes into full throttle…

Thanks loads again!!
63 twitfreak December 9, 2009 at 12:38 pm: who wants a google wave invite? find me on twitter. I have 13 invites left.
64 Johannes December 10, 2009 at 8:25 am: If anybody want to have an invitation, I have a few of them on my Homepage (German). Just submit the form.
65 manuel December 11, 2009 at 12:11 pm: thank you very much!!
66 Abdullah Al jahid December 16, 2009 at 11:58 am: I have 21 Invitation left, let me know who needs invite, I will send you.
67 K December 22, 2009 at 1:02 am: I tried tweety-wave@appspot.com so many times. Did not work for me, sometimes gets stuck at the authenticating stage. Sometimes, authenticating message would not even come up. Nothing happens. I lost count how many times I tried it.

wavetweets@appspot.com works like a charm.
68 Bilal Ahmad December 24, 2009 at 9:53 am: Thanks for this tip.It is helpful for me.
69 Nathalie January 13, 2010 at 1:55 pm: What if nothing happens after ‘Authenticating…’? I am logged in and not blocking pop-ups. I am a Safari user, though. Does that matter?
70 Nathalie January 20, 2010 at 4:14 pm: @Kiluka: Yes, I have! Just drop me a line.
71 Rob Bertholf February 1, 2010 at 11:12 am: I am very interested in using this for reputation management purposes, how would I go about filtering the results and adding custom filtered RSS feeds? Essentially looking to integrate Google Alerts into this panel along with custom queries.

Any thoughts? Thanks!
72 Boyd February 24, 2010 at 3:15 pm: AWESOME!! Thanks worked nice!
73 raja777m April 29, 2010 at 4:28 am: Hey guys temme like this for orkut even