Tuesday 4 December 2012

Free Bird Alerts sent to your Phone (an Update)

In recent weeks Twitter has changed the way that third parties can use their information. This unfortunately means that (for the present time at least) IFTTT can no longer provide hashtag alerts. There are a few other methods of receiving alerts on your phone so here's a couple of options.

If you have an Android device you're in luck (for now)! Tweetdeck for Android currently supports hashtag alerts, although Twitter (who own Tweetdeck) has recently announced that Tweetdeck applications will stop working later on this year. Until that time, here's a video that shows you how to set everything up...


If you don't have an Android device there are less options. Firstly I'd recommend that you sign up to request  Hashtag Alerts to be supported by Hootsuite... click just here.

Hootsuite say that this is currently under review so the more people who cast their vote the more likely it is to be included. Even if you've got an Android device I'd still recommend that you add the request to Hootsuite as it will give you an alternative method that you may actually prefer.

Another option is to set up your phone to receive an alert or text message every time @rbnUK tweets, here's how... https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169887-how-to-use-push-notifications

This will mean that you won't miss a thing. Although using this method means that you can't select which hashtags you're most interested in and you also won't receive alerts when somebody else uses the hashtag.

At Rare Bird Network we're constantly on the look out for ways to improve the service for you and enable you to receive free bird sightings information. If you know of any other methods please do get in touch.

3 comments:

  1. Following rbn Uk and it's a great facility and free which is always a bonus.
    I live in Notts. and would like to recieve Notts info as opposed to all UK rarety news.
    I get your rbnUK tweets now but as Twitter are dumping the Tweetdeck/hashtag facility in May. Then how do I get the Notts. info. after that please?

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    Replies
    1. Hi, thanks for getting in touch.

      The only way, at present, will be to manually check. In your case you could save the hashtag #rbnNTT as a search in whichever Twitter App you use. There are also hashtag apps available which will save your chosen hashtags, just search for "hashtag" in your App Store, but again it will mean manually searching.

      We're constantly on the look out for other methods of providing notifications but at the present time options are limited.

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  2. Using Tweetdeck on PC I just removed the # from my existing search an as the text string is fairly unique the search still gives me what I need - Was #rbnUK OR #rbnGWT now changed to rbnUK OR rbnGWT :)

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