Twitter, FaceBook and WordPress … Why is it so hard to set up a triangle!

Posted by Dean
Mar 17 2009

Recently I decided that I would give FaceBook a crack. Low and behold I am enjoying it a lot as I am reconnecting with friends and colleagues that I had lost contact with since leaving WA. Further, the Drinking Wars application has got me hooked, yes I know that sounds lame. Anyway, I also decided to delve into Twitter on Saturday.

Now at this stage the jury is out on the benefits of Twitter. As a friend recently put it Twitter is just the FaceBook status update. Essentially he is correct, however there are a few people on Twitter that I would like to keep in contact with. Hell, who knows others may pop up over time.

Taking his comment though I thought wouldn’t it be cool if I could push blog announcements to Twitter and FaceBook. This has been accomplished and works well using established WordPress Plugins (Twitter Tools and WordBook). So I can now announce to both Social Networks that I have published something to read.

I also decided to allow Twitter Tools to construct a daily and monthly blog entry of all tweets. This would then serve as a record of those actions on that site within my blog. Yes this is not necessarily a well structured post, but it is captured a snapshot of my activities. As it is a blog entry it is also announced on FaceBook, good stuff. This will also mean that lengthy times without a post will not occur as I am constantly on the Twitter doing stuff … at least until I get the final leg of the triangle in motion..

I then thought about completing the triangle. That is “FaceBook to WordPress” and “FaceBook to Twitter”. “FaceBook to WordPress” was easily accomplished by the PressThis plugin that interrogates my FaceBook status newsfeed. This is then placed in my sidebar. Brilliant, yes there is a bit of delay, but I can live with that. Heck, I can live with once every 24 hour updates from Twitter, so once every hour for FaceBook updates is brilliant.

So the final part of the triangle is “FaceBook to Twitter”. This is proving problematic as the only available FaceBook application (Twitter Updater) to perform this task seems to not be working for 50% of its user base since FaceBook updated it’s publisher and home pages to the new look. I am hopeful that the developers are working on this and that all should be well soon, however it is frustrating to say the least presently. Something that seems so simple is proving very difficult indeed.

PS: I have also seen that for some reason my Twitter account was receiving over 100 attempts for remote access. Whilst I am hesitant to blame the Twitter Updater it is hard to see what else could be the source of this bombardment.


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5 Responses

  1. Ah, The Social Triangle eh? I have a few friends who’ve done what you are doing.

    They love all three apps. I’m not on any…yet.

  2. It’s good to get all 3 working together.This will definitely boost traffic in a very convenient and easy way.

  3. Simonn says:

    Good post, your post could really help me in my work. Hopefully this will help increase my traffic more. Thanks for sharing.

  4. Dejan SEO says:

    Hi I am an SEO and have heard many sing the FB gospel… I never saw any value it it and find my time would be better spent on just about anything else. Cheers, Dejan

  5. Hmm, I love Facebook just as much as the next guy, but I am obsessed with Twitter. :neutral:
    Anyhow, what you’re trying to accomplish is quite easy actually, there is this WordPress plug-in that integrates your posts to twitter and your Facebook blog, as well as Myspace blog.
    Also, with Tweetdeck you can automatically update your Facebook status everytime you tweet, if that is what you want. =)

    Best regards,
    Love R.F.
    Emo Layouts
    Cool Mom