Twitter and Facebook? Integrate and Consolidate!

If you are like most people these days you're on both Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. If so, you probably update your Twitter status to keep in contact with those connections, and then move over to Facebook to update your status separately to keep in contact with those connections. If you're doing this, you're spending way too much time microblogging!



You may know that Twitter is a microblogging site, but you may not realize that your Facebook status is also microblogging. Because of this, they are interchangeable. You could spend time posting to Twitter and then pasting the same content to Facebook, or you could use an application that allow you to consolidate the two. There are two well-known and easy applications provided on Facebook to help you achieve quick, time-saving integration and consolidation.



Twitter Application



The first application is simply called 'Twitter'. You may find it by searching for 'Twitter' on Facebook, under applications. This application currently has 3.1 out of 5 stars, 174,967 active users, and 33,128 Facebook fans.



With the Twitter application you can update your Twitter status and it will automatically update your Facebook status for you. The first thing to know is that if you post a tweet on twitter that is a reply to someone else, and the very first character in the update is '@', it will not post to facebook. This



keeps your Facebook friends from seeing all your '@' replies on Twitter, which they would not understand. Yet, if you post something like "oh my goodness @vitaminstuff - I love your blog post!' - this WILL get posted to Facebook and could be confusing for your friends there.



If you use this application, make sure that unless you want your update to go directly to your Facebook status, begin it with '@'. Some people have a hard time remembering this and end up sending a lot of confusing status updates to Facebook. I, personally, have not had an issue with my own account, but I have a friend on Facebook who updates with this application and I'm always seeing hashtag updates and replies to her twitter friends that do not make a lot of sense of Facebook. If you prefer this application, be careful how you word your tweets.



Selective Twitter Status Application



The 'Selective Twitter Status' application currently has a 4.3 out of 5 stars, 1,763 active users, and 58 fans on Facebook. Simply go to Facebook and search for 'Selective Twitter Status' and it will take you directly to the application.



This application also allows you to post via Twitter and have it show up on your Facebook status, yet this time you get to choose which posts go to Facebook and which ones do not. This helps to avoid over posting or confusing your friends who are not on Twitter with posts that just don't make sense. This application also allows you to leave something on Facebook for a lot longer since, let's face it, you are way more likely to post tens of times a day on Twitter, and really only need to update once, twice or a few times a day on Facebook.



Once you have installed this application simply add the hashtag #fb at the end of your tweets that you would like to send to facebook. A hashtag is a '#' symbol with a group name at the end of it - in this case 'fb' for Facebook - that allows you to broadcast to a certain group of people. This means that people can search for #fb and see all the tweets that are marked with that hashtag. In this case, it also means that your tweet will automatically end up as your Facebook status.



Both applications work well for different people. Now, go forth and save time!



The author of this article is Tim Moore, who maintains a profile on Twitter for his Social Security Disability Blog.