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Facebook now lets you update Twitter

In addition to Facebook Pages being able to update a Twitter account, Facebook now lets individuals (that means you!) do the same as well.
Written by Emil Protalinski, Contributor

As expected, Facebook now lets you send your status updates to Twitter. It's all part of the company's new Subscriptions feature: not only is the social networking giant letting you subscribe to Facebook users who you aren't friends with, and not only is it letting you offer your own public updates to Facebook users who aren't your friends, but it is also letting you send your public Facebook status updates to a linked Twitter account.

Palo Alto has offered this particular feature for Facebook Pages for quite some time now. It's great for businesses, bands, public figures, and whoever else manages a Facebook Page and an accompanying Twitter account. It cuts down their workload significantly since they only have to publish updates on their Facebook Page, and the Twitter account automatically sends out the same messages.

Now, Facebook is doing the same thing for individual profiles. That means if you have a Twitter account, you can make it so that updating your Facebook status publicly will send out a tweet as well.

A few third-party apps have done this in the past, but Facebook has been meticulous at blocking them. The company has always wanted to keep content shared on Facebook strictly on the social network. Apparently, the Web giant is slowly changing its stance.

I've wanted to do this for a long time, although I was recently told that it's frowned upon to issue the same updates on multiple social networks. Thankfully, my Facebook friends and Twitter followers are mutually exclusive.

Here's what you need to get started (check out this quick guide with screenshots):

  1. Go to facebook.com/twitter.
  2. Click the green button titled "Link My Profile to Twitter."
  3. Click the blue button titled "Authorize app."
  4. Optional: choose which Facebook items you want to share.
  5. Optional: click the blue button "Save Changes."

Once you link your accounts, your Twitter account will be updated every time you post a public update to Facebook. Although the feature is enabled at step three, I recommend you go through steps four and five as well to make sure you're only sharing what you want to share.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the company has offered this feature for Facebook Pages for quite some time now. It's great for businesses, bands, public figures, and whoever else manages a Facebook Page and an accompanying Twitter account. It cuts down their workload significantly since they only have to publish updates on their Facebook Page, and the Twitter account automatically sends out the same messages.

Now, Facebook is apparently going to do the same thing for individual profiles. That means if you have a Twitter account, updating your Facebook status publicly will send out a tweet as well.

A few third-party apps have done this in the past, but Facebook has been meticulous at blocking them. The company has always wanted to keep content shared on Facebook strictly on the social network. Apparently, it is slowly changing its stance.

I've wanted to do this for a long time, although I was recently told that it's frowned upon to issue the same updates on multiple social networks. Thankfully, my Facebook friends and Twitter followers are mutually exclusive. You can follow me on Twitter here: @emilprotalinski.

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