My trials and tribulations with social media crossposting
Social media nerds might get a kick out of my (to most people) utterly pointless tribulations with the myriad of different social networks through which I spout my inane shit.
I has got a Facebook account. (http://www.facebook.com/troels.pleimert)
I has got a Twitter account. (http://www.twitter.com/torbenfrost)
I would desperately like these two to get chummy, but I would also like them to do so by my goddamn rules.
(As a side note, you have probably noticed that I also have a Google+ account, and I would love for it to get chummy with my two other “main accounts.” But G+ is still technically in its infancy, so I’ll wait until crossposting to G+ is a reality before moaning about it.)
Here’s what I’ve been doing so far:
I’s got Selective Tweets runnin’ up in this bizzatch. (Okay, sorry, I’ll give up the lingo-confusion from here on.)
That means whenever I use the hash-tag #fb on Twitter, it automatically posts that tweet to my Facebook account.
This is awesome, because it lets me choose which updates I want to post to my Facebook, while keeping retweets, replies and Twitter-centric stuff (like butting in on trending topics) on Twitter, where it damn well belongs.
What is less awesome is that, of course, the Facebook post becomes a carbon copy of the tweet. So if I tag users with a @ on Twitter, that doesn’t translate to Facebook. (I recently found a service that claims to do that, but wouldn’t you know it, they’re “not accepting new users at this time.” Oh, god damn it!)
That still doesn’t solve my boggle, to use the parlance of the Demolition Man, that I may, once in a blue moon, want to write a Facebook status update — with a Facebook-friend tagged — and still share this post on my Twitter feed.
With Facebook-to-Twitter apps, it’s all or nothing. Either you post all your status updates to Twitter, or it’s none at all.
So, naturally, if I write a tweet, tag it with #fb in order to crosspost with Facebook, Facebook will then spit that update back to Twitter — resulting in a very unnecessary doubleposting.
Sure, I can use TweetDeck (which I do) or TweetCaster (which I do), which let you post to both Twitter and Facebook independently of each other without having to tag shit back and forth. Nambu (on my work Mac) won’t do that, and really … how hard is it to code a Selective Tweets-like app for Facebook?
I know that’s a lot of whining about something that really shouldn’t bother me. But hey, I got a degree in this shit, so I think I’m entitled. That doesn’t make it relevant, but hey. This is the sort of shit I think about. Obsessively.
