Article updated: May 21, 2023

Add a Twitter stream

You can create streams to monitor activity on your connected Twitter profiles. Streams help you keep track of engagement with your tweets and monitor tweets from others in a Twitter list. You can also create search streams based on keywords or Boolean queries to focus on important conversations and connection opportunities. Learn more about Streams.

Some of these tasks can be completed in both the web version of Hootsuite and the Hootsuite mobile app. These tasks are indicated by Web and Mobile tabs.

Create a new streams board

When you select New board, you have three options for creating boards for Twitter:

Monitor my own content - Create streams specific to your own social accounts.
Discover new content - Create streams for following trends and competitors.
Follow personalized feeds - Get straight into building custom streams based on any theme or activity.

The options for creating a new board.

To browse all available streams, select Follow personalized feeds, select a Twitter account, and then select one of the available streams for that account.

The stream options available for Twitter.

Add a stream

You can add a stream to an existing board at any time. Boards have a limit of 10 streams.

Go to Streams.
Create or select the board that will host the stream.
Select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account.
Select the streams to add.

iOS devices

Go to Streams.
Scroll down and select Manage boards & streams.
Select Add stream at the bottom of the board you want to add it to.
Select a Twitter account, and then select a stream type.
Select Save in the top right.

Android devices

Go to Streams.
Select Settings .
Select More, and then select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account.
Select the streams to add.
To add the stream to a board, go to the stream you added, select the stream name list, select a board, and then select Apply.

Create a Twitter Search stream

Use powerful search filters to create advanced queries, or do a geosearch to monitor activity around a specific business location.

Note: Twitter indexes their search based on how popular the search term is. At this time, this index can return tweets up to 7 days in the past. Twitter’s search service is not meant to be an exhaustive source of tweets, so not all tweets will be indexed or made available.

Go to Streams.
Create or select the board that will host the stream.
Select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account.
Select Search, and enter your search query.
The search field supports up to 1,000 characters, but it's best to avoid using more than 10 keywords and filter operators. Also see Twitter search queries and filters, later in this article.

Tip: To easily identify complex Twitter search streams, select the stream title to rename it.

iOS devices

Go to Streams.
Scroll down and select Manage boards & streams.
Select Add stream at the bottom of the board you want to add it to.
Select Twitter.
Select Search, enter search terms and then select search on your keypad.
Select Save.
Select a Twitter account that will own the search stream.
When you’re finished adding streams, select Done.

Android devices

Go to Streams.
Select Settings .
Select More, and then select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account.
Select Search Twitter, enter a search term, and then select Search on your keypad.
To add the stream to a board, go to the stream you added, select the stream name list, select a board, and then select Apply.

Create an Advanced Twitter Search stream

Much like the advanced search feature in Twitter, you can create a stream in Hootsuite based on a more narrow Twitter search, including things like specific words, people, locations, and more.

Go to Streams.
Create or select the board that will host the stream.
Select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account, and then select Advanced Search.
Scroll through the available options to select a language, words, phrases, hashtags, accounts, locations, and any other options you like, and then select Add stream.

Create a Twitter geosearch stream

Geosearch streams provide Twitter search results within a specific geographical radius for a specific location. A tweet’s location is taken from Twitter’s geotagging feature; if that's not available, it uses the user’s Twitter profile. To create a geosearch stream, use Google Maps to get the coordinates for the location you want to monitor.

Using Geo-search to Find Conversations.

Find location coordinates in Google Maps

Open Google Maps.
Right-click a location on the map, and then select What's here? for its coordinates.
Copy the coordinates (Command + C on Mac or Ctrl + C on PC).

Add a geosearch stream

In Hootsuite, go to Streams.
Create or select the board that will host the stream.
Select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account, and then select Search.
Enter a search query, followed by a space and geocode: and then paste in your location. There shouldn't be any spaces after the word geocode.
Enter a comma and then enter the radius of your search, followed by km for kilometers or mi for miles.
Example: Hootsuite geocode:49.264046, -123.104358,10km

Example

Say you run a barbecue restaurant and you want to find people in your area (in this example, within 10 kilometers of Vancouver, BC) who might be looking for the type of food you serve. You could create the following Twitter geosearch stream:

(need OR want OR craving OR buy OR get) AND (ribs OR bbq OR burger) -RT geocode:49.282729,-123.120738,10km

Create a Twitter Lists stream

Twitter lists let you group users together, to focus the conversations you’re monitoring. Add streams for existing Twitter lists, or create public or private Twitter list streams from scratch. You can also access these lists on Twitter.

Go to Streams.
Create or select the board that will host the stream.
Select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account, and then select Lists.
Select an existing list, or select Create a new list, give it a name, and make it Public (anyone can view) or Private (only you can view).
Select Add Stream.

iOS devices

Go to Streams.
Scroll down and select Manage boards & streams.
Select Add stream at the bottom of the board you want to add it to.
Select Twitter.
Select the List tab at the bottom of the screen.
Select a Twitter account and then one of the lists in that account.
Select Save in the top right.
When you’re finished adding streams, select Done in the top right.

Android devices

Go to Streams.
Select Settings .
Select More, and then select Add stream.
Select a Twitter account.
Select List, and then select an existing list.
To add the stream to a board, go to the stream you added, select the stream name list, select a board, and then select Apply.

For more about Twitter Lists and how to use them, see How to Set Up and Use Twitter Lists: 9 Great Ideas. Visit the Hootsuite blog for news, tips, tools, and tactics to help you succeed on social media.

Available stream types and stream content

The types of streams available for Twitter, and what you can do with them, depend on the functions made available by Twitter to third parties like Hootsuite. Expand the following table to see detailed descriptions of each Twitter stream type.

Table: Available stream types for Twitter

Twitter stream types and what you can do with each
Stream type	Stream content	Engagement options	Available in mobile app?
Home	Your tweets and retweets, as well as those from the users you follow. Limit 800 tweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages.	Yes
Mentions	Mentions of your profile in tweets and replies. Does not include quoted tweets. Includes replies to promoted tweets, but not ads. Limit 800 tweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages. Show conversations to view tweets being replied to.	Yes
My Tweets	Your tweets and retweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages. Delete own tweets.	Yes
Likes	Tweets you liked. Limit 200 tweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages.	Yes
Retweets	Your tweets that were retweeted by others. Does not include quoted tweets. Limit 100 tweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages. Delete own tweets.	Yes
Scheduled	Your scheduled tweets, listed chronologically, with the next tweet to publish at the top. Limit 100 tweets.	Edit scheduled tweets. Delete scheduled tweets.	No
Followers	One tweet each from all new followers, most recent at the top. Displays up to 20 new followers on initial creation.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages.	No
Search	Tweets matching your search query. Limit 100 tweets and 7 days.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages.	Yes
Lists	A timeline of tweets and retweets by users in the selected list. Limit 900 tweets.	Reply to tweets. Retweet. Retweet from another connected profile. Quote tweets and retweet. Like tweets. Assign tweets.* Send direct messages.	Yes

Notes:

Twitter polls are not supported and don’t appear in streams.
Use Inbox to manage your direct messages on Twitter (see Overview of Hootsuite Inbox).

Tip: Select the timestamp on any post in a stream to open it in Twitter and view it there.

Twitter search queries and filters

When entering your search queries, don’t use commas to separate the search terms. Instead, use spaces, which act like AND, so results will contain ALL the terms. Put OR between terms to pull results containing either term. See the following filter table for more options.

You can add filters to the end of your search queries to narrow your results. For example, you can search for tweets in a specific language, or from a specific user.

The query pizza lang:fr min_retweets:5 min_faves:10 filter:images will display all tweets in French mentioning pizza that have at least 5 retweets and 10 likes and contain an image.

Tip: To find your quoted tweets, create a search stream for your own Twitter handle plus the filter:quote. Example: “twitter.com/hootsuite filter:quote”. Then select the title of the stream to rename it ‘Quoted tweets’.

Expand the following table to see detailed filter examples.

Table: Filter examples for Twitter search queries

filter examples for twitter search queries
Filter example	Result
General
twitter search	containing both “twitter” AND “search”
"owls rock"	containing the exact phrase “owls rock”
restaurant OR cafe	containing either “restaurant” OR “cafe” (or both)
(strawberry OR banana) milkshake	containing "strawberry milkshake" or "banana milkshake"
-RT	excludes retweets
super -man	containing "super" but not "man"
#followfriday	containing the hashtag "followfriday"
Users
from:thenoodlestop	sent from user "TheNoodleStop"
to:thenoodlestop	sent to user "TheNoodleStop"
@Hootsuite_Help	mentioning user "Hootsuite_Help"
filter:verified	containing tweets by verified users
list:pdon/deals OR list:18464315	containing tweets from the list “deals” by user @pdon (https://twitter.com/i/lists/18464315) Note: Twitter recommends using the list ID (rather than username and list name) to filter on a list, because names can change. You can find the list ID at the end of the URL for the page.
from:@username	not containing tweets from a specific user
Timeframe (within the last 7 days)
superhero since:2020-01-23	containing "superhero" sent since "year-month-day"
help until:2020-01-27	containing "help" sent up to "year-month-day"
Links and Media
rainbows filter:links	containing "rainbows" and linking to URLs
filter:images	containing all posts with images
filter:links	containing all posts with links
filter:videos	containing all posts with videos
filter:media	containing all posts with videos or images
Social Source
source:instagram	containing Instagram content
source:foursquare	containing Foursquare content
source:Facebook	containing posts coming to Twitter from Facebook
exclude:nativeretweets	does not include retweets originating from Twitter
exclude:retweets	does not include regular RT retweets
Minimum Result
min_replies:5	containing tweets with 5 or more replies
min_retweets:30	containing tweets with 30 or more retweets
min_faves:100	containing tweets with 100 or more likes
Language
lang:ar	Arabic
lang:da	Danish
lang:nl	Dutch
lang: en	English
lang:fil	Filipino
lang:fi	Finnish
lang:fr	French
lang:de	German
lang:el	Greek
lang:hi	Hindi
lang:hu	Hungarian
lang:id	Indonesian
lang:it	Italian
lang:ja	Japanese
lang:ko	Korean
lang:ml	Malayalam
lang:no	Norwegian
lang:pl	Polish
lang:pt	Portuguese
lang:ru	Russian
lang:zh-cn	Simplified Chinese
lang:es	Spanish
lang:sv	Swedish
lang:tl	Tagalog
lang:ta	Tamil
lang:th	Thailand
lang:zh-tw	Traditional Chinese
lang:tr	Turkish

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