Facebook Exporter Tool Links Pages to Twitter
Facebook on Thursday announced an exporter tool that will send Facebook Page updates directly to Twitter.
Facebook on Thursday announced an exporter tool that will send Facebook Page updates directly to Twitter.
Businesses, politicians, and celebrities with Pages will soon be able to link their status updates, links, photos, notes, and event creations directly to the micro-blogging site.
"Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who've created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible," Facebook's Michael Gummelt wrote in a blog post. "Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities may want to put out calls for help to both their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers, all at the same time."
Gummelt, a Stanford University junior, created the app during his summer internship at the social networking site. It has already been rolled out in beta to Page owners like Dane Cook, Livestrong, the World Wildlife Fund, the NBA, and WNBA, and will be available soon to all Page owners.
Users will be able to control what type of information they share via their privacy settings – just status updates and photos, for example, or only event creations and links. They can also remove themselves from Twitter by clicking the "unlink from Twitter" button.
People with multiple pages will be able to link each page to a different Twitter account.
"Twitter was a natural next step to link to Facebook Pages because it's a powerful tool for broadcasting short message widely," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. "Posts from Facebook Pages are already public to everyone on Facebook and, with this feature, now will be public to everyone on Twitter."
No word on when this might be available for personal profiles. The Twitter app for Facebook currently just posts members' Twitter updates in their Facebook status update bar, which can be helpful for those who don't want to switch back and forth between the two sites, but also somewhat annoying if you have friends who are prolific Tweeters.