Today, we made some considerable changes to the Social Media Asset in Site Builder.  The changes are on the Twitter side; the Facebook behaviors are unchanged.

Twitter Mode

In contrast to the one-size-fits-all solution of yesterday, there are now three ways you can use the social media asset to display tweets.  Each method has its pros and cons. 

Above is a screenshot of the 'Edit Asset' page for the updated Social Media Asset in Site Builder 3.

"Search" allows you to display tweets that match a search string.

Pros:

• it allows you to mix and match multiple usernames and hashtags

Cons:

• it is unable to display tweets that are older than 5-14 days (this is Twitter's own limitation on the search index)

Example configuration: @UCANR,#food2025,#bananas,@ANRWebTeam

"User" allows you to display tweets from a single user's timeline

Pros:

• it displays tweets regardless of age, which is great if you want to display tweets for a user who tweets infrequently

Cons:

• it is limited to a single user

Example configuration: @ANRWebTeam

"List" allows you to display tweets from a public twitter list (what is a Twitter list?)

Pros:

• it allows you to display tweets from several users (regardless of the age of each tweet)
• lists are easily configured on Twitter's website

Cons:

• lists can only contain users; no hashtags!

Example configuration: list owner: 'UCANR', list name: 'uc-anr'

Note: Existing social assets configured for twitter have been converted to use the 'Search' mode described above.  Of course, you are free to update your assets however you like.

Hopefully, we've made it easier for you to display tweets of interest on your site.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go retweet a tweet I saw earlier.