Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that users will soon be able to post to Twitter directly from their Facebook profiles later on this week. The service, which will use Facebook’s new fb.me short URL, will post public status updates directly to Twitter. The functionality of the service is not yet clear, however the timing is interesting considering that last week the company began encouraging all active users to make their status updates and other content more public.
The URLs from status updates will then link back directly to the user’s profile, in turn generating more traffic for Facebook. It’s somewhat surprising to see Facebook take this action, given that Facebook competes with Twitter in some regards, particularly public status search. With Facebook increasingly opening their “walled garden”, it makes some sense to let users post directly to Twitter.
With close to 100 million users now theoretically publishing public status updates, one has to wonder if the new change will end up crashing Twitter’s servers, which are already known for occasional downtime. Having millions of new status updates in a short period of time could most definitely overwhelm Twitter. This new functionality is similar to a service FriendFeed previously provided though through the ff.im short URL.
With the FriendFeed team now working at Facebook, there’s a good chance that Facebook knows what the impact of publishing to Twitter will be: an increase in PageViews. This new feature most definitely forces even the brightest Facebook analysts to question the company’s motivation though. For now we’ll have wait and see how this product is rolled out, and we only need to wait a couple days at most if the TechCrunch report is accurate.
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This post raises interesting questions about FaceBook's motivation for sure. The bottom line is that FaceBook and Twitter are going to have to be integrated because that's what both sets of users want. The important thing for small business owners to remember is that FaceBook and Twitter are and will continue to be in a constant state of flux. While both are useful, since you don't own or control them, that should be left to your branded blog.
Comment by Donna Maria Coles Jo — December 16, 2009 @ 9:18 am
I think it's about time Facebook integrates this feature into personal profiles since it already exists for pages. I don't necessarily agree that Facebook and Twitter are in competition though. They definitely play off of each other in order to continue innovation, but people use them in different ways. If anything, I see Twitter competing with feed readers as it's basically a more personal/interactive version of the same content.
However, I will be interested in seeing if Facebook chooses to use the fb.me to replace bit.ly for pages and then offers stats via page insights.
Comment by Rachel — December 16, 2009 @ 11:46 am
This needs to happen very soon! Anyone have a contact number for facebook help? My privacy settings are fubar.
Comment by Facebook User — December 16, 2009 @ 5:21 pm