I’m a bit of a Twitter addict, I’ll admit it. And because I occasionally do some crazy things in my personal life, I like the idea of being able to post to Twitter easily from anywhere in China, regardless of VPN access or even wifi/3G access. Once upon a time, you could register your Chinese mobile phone with Twitter and post tweets via SMS, but no longer. And my previous workaround doesn’t work anymore because Fanfou has sadly removed its bind-to-Twitter function. Update: Turns out this is back up and running again, so either of these methods will work. Given the choice, I’d say set them both up just to be safe, but use the Fanfou one as your primary because it’s much faster.
Before we go any further, I should tell you that this solution probably isn’t for everyone. It involves a lot of compromises, and the end result is far from perfect. It is also going to be a little difficult if you can’t read at least a little Chinese. But if you really want to be able to post to Twitter from anywhere, so long as you get mobile phone reception, here’s a roundabout way to do it. (Note that you could also use a similar workflow to update other blocked social media sites, like Facebook).
Step 1: Register a new Sina Weibo Account
You can use any Sina Weibo account, of course, but I wanted to keep my personal account separate and create an account that was used only as a channel to feed posts to Twitter. Also, for this to work, you’ll need to bind your phone to the weibo account, and you may not want your phone number and ID info associated with your “real” weibo account. So I set up a whole new Weibo account, and I recommend you do too. Make a few quick test posts to help with the next step. Then click on your account name, which is on the upper right side of the screen in the top nav bar. When that page loads, there will be a number right after “weibo.com/” in the URL bar. Copy that number. (In the illustration below I’ve blurred my personal details, but you get the idea.)
Step 2: Find your RSS feed link
For some reason, Sina makes it very difficult to find the RSS feed for your weibo account. Luckily, someone else has created a tool to help us do just that. Click on this link. On that page, fill in the number you copied in step one, and then hit the submit button as illustrated below.
If you’ve done that correctly, you should get something that looks like the image below. See that link I highlighted in red? That’s your RSS feed, so copy that link. Click on it to double-check it’s working properly. It will look like a mess of code, but somewhere in there you should see the text of the test messages you posted to your Weibo in Step 1.
Step 3: Set up an Ifttt Task Using Your RSS link and Twitter account
Now, head over to Ifttt with the RSS link you copied in Step 2. I already have an Ifttt account set up and it’s connected to my Twitter account, but if you haven’t done that, you’ll need to set up an account. (It’s easy and in English, so you shouldn’t need my help with that). Once you’ve got your account set up, create a new task. For the “this” section of the task, choose “RSS Feed” and then paste in the link you copied in step 2. For the “that” section of the task, choose Twitter and ‘post a new tweet’ (you may have to take a second to connect your Twitter account to ifttt if you haven’t done so already). All you need it to post is the content of each Weibo update, so in the “What’s happening?” field you can delete {{EntryTitle}}{{EntryURL}} and replace them with {{EntryContent}}.
Once you’re finished, save the task, and then back on the main page click on the arrow to inspect the task you’ve just created. If you’ve done it right, it should look like this:
If it does, congratulations, you’re on to Step 4!
Step 4: Bind Your Phone to Your Weibo Account
Now, go back to weibo and click in the top right corner to access your account settings menu. If you’re not sure how to do that, see the image below:
Once you’re into your settings, you need to click on the “bind phone” option along the navigation column on the left. It’s the one with the little image of a phone next to it:
That then takes you to the page where you actually connect your phone to your Weibo account. Fill your mobile phone number into the text box as shown below, and then click the green button to proceed.
The next page will give you a confirmation code, and a number to text that code to. Text the first green number to the second green number, as illustrated below. You may also want to store that second number in your contacts list as it is the number you will send text all future posts to.
You should get a couple reply texts more or less immediately, confirming that your phone is now bound to the weibo account (see below). These texts also tell you that in the future, texts sent to that number will be posted to your weibo. Give it a try by sending a couple test texts. Here’s what it should look like:
If everything is set up right, you should get a confirmation message saying your weibo has been posted relatively immediately, and if you look online on weibo, you should see it there. It will be slower to appear on Twitter, with a delay of between 10-30 minutes in my experience so far, but keep an eye on your twitter and be sure your tweet finally appears there. Here’s my test message, which has gone all the way through this circuitous system and arrived on Twitter:
This is a test of the emergency tweet system. SMS to Weibo to Ifttt to Twitter
— Charlie Custer (@ChinaGeeks) April 27, 2012
Bonus Steps
That’s all you need to do, however, if you want to be extra secure, it’s a good idea to keep your new Weibo account a secret. Since Weibo is censored, it’s possible your message could be deleted before Ifttt picks up on it, especially if your Weibo account is high-profile or if you mention any “sensitive” keywords. So keep your new account a secret, and if you need to talk sensitive stuff (keeping in mind that Sina has access to whatever information is connected to your phone) do what Chinese net users do, and use mispellings or code. That should keep your post up long enough to be noticed by Ifttt and posted to Twitter. If you want to be really thorough, you can always go back into your weibo account and delete posts after they’ve gone up on Twitter.
This post was updated at 5:36 pm on April 27, see the text marked “Update” for details.