Facebook is now allowing those with Facebook pages, (not individual profile pages) to now update their Facebook and Twitter pages simultaneously via Facebook.
According to Facebook, they have received many queries about the concept of integrating Facebook and Twitter, as users want their content to be easily distributed to all their followers on both Facebook and Twitter and as quickly as possible, which has lead them to release this new application.
This new feature will allow the administrators of Facebook pages (not individual profile pages) to update their Facebook pages and Tweets at the same time, from the one platform.
This means that musicians, celebrities, businesses and organisations will be able to post news, photos, updates and events to both their Facebook fans and Twitter followers simultaneously, allowing them to reach their audiences as quickly and simply as possible.
The new feature will give Facebook page administrators the option to update their pages on both social networks and an option for which updates they share, from photos, links, notes, events or all / none of the above on Twitter as well as Facebook and will become available over the next couple of days.
This is Facebook’s latest attempt to increase user satisfaction and also make it even easier for its users to use Facebook from their favourite websites and applications, like they achieved with Facebook Connect. Also they have integrated their platform with many other popular sites across the web such as Yahoo!, YouTube and Hulu, so integration with Twitter seems like a natural progression and obvious next step.
But where is this latest integration going to go? Facebook and Twitter are thought of as rivals, so how is this new application going to effect each platform and which will see the most benefits?
From Facebook’s point of view this integration could go one of two ways:
- Facebook will increase the availability of the app, making it available to users with individual profiles, as well as Facebook pages. This will mean Facebook will become one of Twitter’s largest clients and could ultimately help it’s rival to grow.
- On the other hand, the application will not become available to users with profile pages and therefore Facebook would encourage companies, organisations, brands and celebrities to spend more time on Facebook, as they will be able to update all of their fans and followers from the single platform simultaneously, making it almost unnecessary to go on to Twitter.
However, Twitter is still yet to connect it’s platform to Facebook, they were announced as partners about a year ago, which many thought would result in them allowing users to log-in to Twitter with their Facebook user names and passwords. This would provide great benefits for new Twitter users as they would easily be able to find and follow their Facebook friends on Twitter, without having to try and locate them individually, this is likely to be launched at some point, but a date has not been announced yet.
However the real question is… How will these integrations affect the Facebook vs. Twitter rivalry in the race for top social networking site? Or will it mean that they will no longer be competing against each other but actually complimenting one another to become the ultimate social media platform?
