Facebook to Enable Facebook-to-Twitter Posts for Pages

August 21st, 2009 at 12:06 PM - News by Bryan Chaffin

Facebook announced late on Thursday that the company would be allowing Facebook Page admins to have their status updates go out to Twitter. Heretofore, Facebook has allowed third party Facebook apps to sync Twitter updates to Facebook statuses. This marks a first for Facebook to build its own Twitter-enabler, and the first time that its users could go from Facebook out to a competing social networking tool like Twitter.

"If you manage a Facebook Page," the company wrote in a blog post, "you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them. If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts."

An example of a Tweet made from Facebook, as provided by Facebook

As noted above, third party Facebook Apps allowed Twitter posts to become Facebook status updates, but it was a tricky affair when it came to Pages, which are Facebook's way for companies, bands, business, and celebrities to have a presence on the site. For instance, The Mac Observer has a Facebook Page, and you should become a fan.

If a Page administrator was using a third party Twitter-syncing App, it was as likely as not to post to both the Page(s) being administered and the user's personal Facebook site. Facebook's decision to directly offer a Twitter-syncing tool for Page admins means that this no longer be a problem.

It will also neatly turn Facebook into a Twitter client. As Tweets made in this fashion will be branded as being from Facebook, Page admins will become prime Facebook promoters.

Facebook's blog post specified that this service would not be offered or extended to personal profiles.