Introduction

Twitter currently offers a feed of all "public timeline" updates via an extremely informal implementation of the Jabber PubSub specification.  If you're planning a Twitter API project that needs a constant stream of public updates to work, this is the way to do it.

Requirements

In order to start working with the public timeline feed you'll need:

• A Jabber server.  You must be running your own Jabber server - we've tried sending the public timeline stream to free Google Talk and Jabber.org accounts, but have run into rate limit issues.  Popular Jabber servers include ejabberd and Openfire.
• A JID (Jabber ID, for example user@jabber.example.com) for us to talk to.  This JID must have added the twitter@twitter.com JID to its friend roster.

What You Get

Updates from Twitter users who:

• Are public (that is, their accounts are not "protected" or private).
• Have set a profile picture.  This helps keep some automated/spam updates off the timeline.
• Have not been manually flagged by Twitter administrators for content or behavior that breaches our Terms of Service.

This tends to average 300 - 400 messages per minute.  We do not guarantee a consistent rate of delivery.  Messages include an Atom Entry representation of the update.  The attributes contained in this entry are subject to change, but it is extremely unlikely that Twitter will remove any existing attributes.

How To Get Going

Once you have a JID set up and can communicate with the Twitter Jabber bot with it, email alex@twitter.com.  He'll enable the PubSub feed for you.

Troubleshooting

• Check your firewall settings.
• Ensure your JID can communicate with twitter@twitter.com: try sending "help" and ensure you receive a response.
• Ensure that your JID has sent an "online" presence packet to twitter@twitter.com, and that it generally appears online from another point on the internet.

Support

Absolutely none.  This is an experimental, beta service provided for free by Twitter.  Our developers will try to work with you as much as possible, but Jabber PubSub is not an "official" part of our API at this point in time.  Twitter reserves the right to disable this stream at any time and for any reason.  We're unlikely to, though, so don't fret.

What's Next

We want to see the Twitter developer community build cool stuff with our Jabber service, and this is a first step.  Talk to us about what you build, and what you could build if we made changes and improvements.  We'd like to support more API methods than just the public timeline via Jabber PubSub, and we're also considering non-Jabber ways to push streams of updates from Twitter to various clients.  Your needs help us decide what to work on.