Article updated: January 15, 2025
Create an X feed
You can create feeds to monitor activity for your connected X (formerly Twitter) accounts. These are referred to as streams in Hootsuite. Streams help you keep track of engagement with your posts and monitor posts from others in an X 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.
Create a new X stream board
In Hootsuite, you organize your social media feeds into boards and streams. Boards are categories, and streams are social feeds within those categories. Boards act as containers that you use to organize streams by topic or keyword, or to keep track of competitors. You can add up to 20 boards, and each board can hold up to 10 streams.
When you select New board for an X stream, you have the following options:
- 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 to building custom streams based on any theme or activity.
To browse all available streams, select Follow personalized feeds, select an X account, and then select one of the available streams for that account.
Add a stream
You can add a stream to an existing board at any time. Boards have a limit of 10 streams.
- Go to More
, and then select Streams
.
- Create or select the board that will host the stream.
- Select Add stream.
- Select an X 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 an X 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 an X 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 an X (formerly Twitter) search stream
Use powerful search filters to create advanced queries, or do a geosearch to monitor activity around a specific business location. You can only create search streams in the web version of Hootsuite.
X indexes their search based on how popular the search term is. At this time, this index can return posts for the past seven days. X’s search service is not meant to be an exhaustive source of posts, so not all posts will be indexed or made available.
- In Streams, create or select the board that will host the stream.
- Select Add stream.
- Select an X 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 X search queries and filters, later in this article.
Tip: To easily identify complex X (formerly Twitter) search streams, select the stream title to rename it.
Create an Advanced Search stream
Much like the advanced search feature in X, you can create a stream in Hootsuite based on a more narrow X search, including things like specific words, people, locations, and more.
- In Streams, create or select the board that will host the stream.
- Select Add stream.
- Select an X account, and then select Advanced Search.
- Scroll through and select from the available options, and then select Add stream.
Create a geosearch stream
Geosearch streams provide X search results within a specific geographical radius for a specific location. A post’s location is taken from X’s geotagging feature. X restricts results to posts tagged with the specified location or X place ID. So, in order to search your stream by geolocation, you'll need to tag it with a location.
- In Streams, create or select the board that will host the stream.
- Select Add stream.
- Select an X account, and then select Search.
- Enter a search query, followed by a space and one of the following operators:
-
place: - Enter
place:
and then enter a your location. For example,Hootsuite place:Vancouver
. Multi-word place names, like "New York City" should be enclosed in quotes (for example,Hootsuite place:"New York City"
). -
place_country: - Enter
place_country:
and then enter a country character code (see a list of character codes on Wikipedia). For example,Hootsuite place_country:CA
. -
point_radius: - Enter
point_radius:
and then enter the longitude, latitude, and radius coordinates in kilometers (km) or miles (mi) with a space in between each coordinate. You can get a location's coordinates in Google Maps. For 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 use this operator to create the following stream:(need OR want OR craving OR buy OR get) AND (ribs OR bbq OR burger) -RT point_radius:[49.282729 123.120738 10km
-
place: - Enter
Create an X (formerly Twitter) lists stream
X lists let you group users together, to focus the conversations you’re monitoring. Add streams for existing X lists, or create public or private X list streams from scratch. You can also access these lists on X.
- In Streams, create or select the board that will host the stream.
- Select Add stream.
- Select an X 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.
For more about X Lists and how to use them, see How to Set Up and Use X 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 X, and what you can do with them, depend on the functions made available by X to third parties like Hootsuite. Expand the following table to see detailed descriptions of each X stream type.
Stream type | Stream content | Engagement options | Available in mobile app? |
---|---|---|---|
Home | Your posts and reposts, as well as those from the users you follow. Limit 800 posts. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. | Yes |
Mentions | Mentions of your profile in posts and replies. Does not include quoted posts. Includes replies to promoted posts, but not ads. Limit 800 posts. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. Show conversations to view posts being replied to. | Yes |
My Tweets | Your posts and reposts. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. Delete own posts. | Yes |
Likes | Posts you liked. Limit 200 posts. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. | Yes |
Scheduled | Your scheduled posts, listed chronologically, with the next post to publish at the top. Limit 100 posts. | Edit scheduled posts. Delete scheduled posts. | No |
Search | Posts matching your search query. Limit 100 posts and 7 days. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. | Yes |
Lists | A timeline of posts and reposts by users in the selected list. Limit 900 posts. | Reply to posts. Repost. Repost from another connected profile. Quote posts and repost. Like posts. Assign posts.* Send direct messages. | Yes |
- X polls are not supported and don’t appear in streams.
- Use Inbox 2.0 to manage your direct messages on X (see Inbox 2.0 quick start guide - for agents).
Tip: Select the timestamp on any post in a stream to open it in X and view it there.
X search queries and filters
Create X search streams based on keywords or Boolean queries to focus on important conversations and connection opportunities. X search streams must not exceed 500 characters and may be limited by their complexity.
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 posts in a specific language, or from a specific user.
The query pizza lang:fr min_faves:10 filter:images will display all posts in French mentioning pizza that have at least 10 likes and contain an image.
Tip: To find your quoted posts, create a search stream for your own X handle plus the filter:quote
. Example: “X.com/hootsuite filter:quote”. Then select the title of the stream to rename it ‘Quoted posts’.
Expand the following table to see detailed filter examples.
Filter example | Result |
---|---|
General | |
X search | containing both “X” 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 reposts |
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 posts by verified users |
list:pdon/deals OR list:18464315 |
containing posts from the list “deals” by user @pdon (https://X.com/i/lists/18464315) Note: X 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 posts 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 X from Facebook |
Minimum Result | |
min_replies:5 | containing posts with 5 or more replies |
min_faves:100 | containing posts 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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