Feeding Your Twitter Updates Into Your Facebook Account

Here's an answer to a question I was asked. I decided to post it here, thinking that someone else might find it useful some day. Bear in mind that I'm new to both of these applications, so the following may over-explain or otherwise be a little clumsy.

Assuming you have a Twitter account and a Facebook account, you can make your Twitter updates pipe into Facebook so that each tweet presents as a status update to those following you on Facebook. To do this, log in to your Facebook account and then visit:

http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Those familiar with Facebook can probably stop reading here.

If it's not intuitive what do do next (i.e., you're as much of a Facebook n00b as I am), here's the play-by-play. My wordiness makes the procedure look more complicated than it really is.

1. You'll be asked by Twitter: "Allow access?" Click the "Allow" button.
   
   
2. On the next screen, you'll be asked for your Twitter username and password. Enter those (NB: not your Facebook uname/pword) and click "Log in."
   
   
3. On the next screen, click the big gray button at the top of the screen labeled "+Allow Twitter to update your Facebook status." You'll get a confirmation screen; click "Allow status updates."
   
   

At this point, you'll be on a page that serves as an interface to Twitter through Facebook. You can tweet from here, read the tweets coming from the people you're following, and so on. But only if you want to -- you do not have to use this page for your future tweets to be posted on your Facebook page.

If you do like this way of dealing with Twitter, read on.

You can get back to this page of by visiting the same URL mentioned above; i.e., http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. You may wish to bookmark this page.

Also, and perhaps better, you can add Twitter to your Facebook Applications menu permanently. (This menu is available via the "Applications" button in the lower left corner of your Facebook page.) To do this:

1. Start by hovering your mouse over "Settings" in the toolbar across the top of your Facebook page
   
   
2. Click "Application Settings" in the drop-down menu
   
   
3. On the next page, find Twitter on the list and click "Edit Settings" on that line
   
   
4. Click the "Bookmark" tab in the pop-up window
   
   
5. Check the box labeled "Bookmark Twitter"
   
   
6. Click "Okay"
   
   

[Added 2009-01-11 18:30] This may also cause the Twitter app to appear as a quick launch icon along the bottom of your screen. At least, that icon is there for me now. Could also be just because I've used it recently.

Note that there are other settings available for your fiddling pleasure in this pop-up window. As far as I can tell, leaving things as they were seems fine.

Finally, my starting source for this little adventure (see Notes below) says that tweets beginning with the @ sign won't display on Facebook. I haven't verified this, but it seems like the right design decision.

If/as I learn more about this, I'll add updates to this post. Please feel free to add questions, comments, corrections, and criticisms in the Comments.

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Notes:

• The Joshmeister has a blog post which I came across when I was first Googling to see if Twitter could be piped into Facebook. Thanks to him for pointing me in the right direction. Note that the main purpose of his post is to describe a problem (and solution) that I don't quite understand at the moment -- something he calls "the Double Feed-Post Glitch," but his post may be of interest to others.
  
  
• Going the other direction -- making your Facebook status updates pipe to Twitter -- is not something I've tried. Jeff Sandquist has a likely-looking page to get you started, as do others.