Facebook announced in a blog post yesterday that a new tool will be rolling out that allows you to update your Twitter profile from your Facebook Fan Page!
Michael Gummelt, an Stanford University junior created this tool during his summer intern at Facebook. And with all the buzz surrounding this tool, he probably secured so pretty good offers for when he graduates from Stanford!
This new Facebook tool will allow you to create updates in your Facebook Fan Page, and send those udpates directly to your Twitter profile, making it easy to update both profiles from one location.
You need to be aware, however, that Twitter only allows 140 character spaces where as your Facebook Fan Page can obviously exceed that.
Along with sending text updates from your Facebook Fan Pages to Twitter, you can also send links, photos, notes, notes, events, or all of the above.
Here’s an excerpt from the blog post by Gummelt:
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. 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.
If you manage a Facebook Page, 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. This new feature will soon be available at itter.
The Impact This Has On Business
This new tool adds to the social media arsenal for businesses. Being able to now work from one location, that being your Facebook Fan Page, save you time from having to switch between sites. But it also ensures that you are now fully maximizing both marketing tools (Facebook & Twitter) for viral exposure on the web.
Facebook’s Strategy With This
Finally, it seems to me that an update like this getting approved by Facebook means they see a competitive edge as well. Facebook knows that Twitter is a hugely popular platform, so if they could create a way for users to be able to work from Facebook and still update their Twitter profiles, they are creating an environment for everyone to now work directly from their Facebook Fan Pages.
And when your Facebook Fan Page becomes your work station for both Facebook and Twitter marketing, then I say that Facebook has achieved their objective.
The advantage of Facebook over Twitter is that you get the conversational element in Facebook through direct comments, likes, and dislikes – something that Twitter does not feature. Plus, it’s much easier to link media to your updates.
So now I’m going to go and link my Facebook Fan Page to Twitter and check it out!