Can a favourited but protected tweet trigger an IFTTT action?

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[UPDATE, July 5, 2012: It looks like the scenario I described below is possible. I have favourited a number of protected tweets and they have triggered IFTTT to send them to Buffer, which has scheduled them to be posted on my public Twitter account at certain intervals during the day.]

Considering to make my “shadow Twitter account” – the one with which I collect tweets for my buffer – private. Funny thing is, people are starting to follow and favourite tweets posted from that shadow account becasue it is (obviously) faster than my “real” account.

It wouldn’t be a big problem as such, but it becomes awkward when I reply to someone and they have no idea who/what the shadow account is.

But I’ll have to test if it is even possible to make the account “private” with myself as the only follower, and whether I can then still favourite those tweets, since that makes them “public”…

Twitter states:

“(…) When you protect your Tweets, the following restrictions are put in place:

  • People will have to request to follow you; each follow request will need approval. Learn more.
  • Your Tweets will only be visible to users you’ve approved.
  • Other users will not be able to retweet your Tweets. Learn more.
  • Protected Tweets will not appear in Twitter search or Google search.
  • @replies you send to people who aren’t following you will not be seen by those users (because you have not given them permission to see your Tweets).
  • You cannot share permanent links to your Tweets with anyone other than your approved followers. (…)”

Now, does this mean that the following scenario is possible?

  1. Twitter user with protected account (Account 1) tweets a tweet.
  2. The tweet is read and favourited by its only approved follower (Account 2).
  3. Favouriting the protected tweet by the approved follower (Account 2) triggers an action by IFTTT to send the favourited tweet to Buffer.
  4. Buffer posts the favourtied tweet as a tweet from the approved follower (Account 2).

What I fear may go wrong is step number 3: the protected tweet, even after being favourited by Account 2, may not be able to trigger IFTTT.

 

Also I wonder what will happen to my existing followers on Account 1.

We’ll see.