Design Meme

Twitterbook has been updated! Download the new script and use it to update your Twitter account with your Facebook status.

The first version of Twitterbook was released last year, and since then I hadn’t spent much time looking at social networking software, except for Facebook. At some point changes to one or both systems meant the script stopped working.

This was likely due to Facebook removing the ‘is’ from your status. Now users can post something like ‘Stuart has updated Twitterbook’, rather than trying to use ‘is’ creatively and say something like ‘Stuart is reflecting on how he updated Twitterbook’. Removing the ‘is’ also makes your Facebook status work a lot more like Twitter.

Even though I hadn’t posted to Twitter in over a year, I’ve been convinced to give it another try. There certainly seem to be more users now, technorati is indexing Tweets, and I could see how it might be helpful with creating a blog. Particularly if you’re more inclined to write short posts, like me.

Download Twitterbook v2 (4KB)

You’ll need to edit twitterbook.php before running it to include your personal information.

To find the URL for your Facebook Status Feed, first login and go to your “My Profile” page. In your Mini-Feed click on the “See All” link to view all the various updates you’ve made. Select the “Status Stories” view, and you’ll also see an option for viewing your Status as an RSS feed. Copy the URL for this feed and paste it into the twitter.php file where you see FULL_URL_FOR_YOUR_FACEBOOK_FEED. You will also need to enter the name that appears in your Facebook status updates where you see YOUR_NAME, as well as your Twitter login and password where you see YOUR_USERNAME and YOUR_PASSWORD respectively.

After updating twitter.php with your personal data, upload the file to a server running PHP. Anytime you go to the URL for the script it will check your RSS feed at Facebook and pass the information along to Twitter. You could run it anytime you update your Facebook status—or choose to only Twitter the status updates you want to make more public.

Let me know what you think of the script, status updates, Facebook and Twitter. Post a comment, or connect with me at twitter.com/designmeme.