TweetDeck Adds Facebook Integration
TweetDeck, the Adobe Air desktop Twitter management application, has released a beta version of its 0.24 release with added support for Facebook services.
The TweetDeck 0.24 pre-release fully integrates Facebook functionality into the program in a few ways: You can monitor Facebook status updates directly within the utility, even creating a new column dedicated exclusively to those. You can also send outgoing messages to Facebook exclusively, or to Twitter and Facebook concurrently, eliminating the need for Facebook’s Twitter app (and also giving you a little more control compared to the options it had provided). Finally, you can see a Facebook user’s status, and — if he’s online — open a Facebook chat window with him right within the TweetDeck program.
TweetDeck 0.24 will even let you pull content from one service into the other. For example, you can take a Facebook update and retweet it via Twitter. As Mashable’s Adam Ostrow points out, this raises some interesting questions over privacy, since Facebook status updates aren’t necessarily intended for public broadcast.
The TweetDeck team indicates, too, that more options are on the way.
“This is the first step in integrated Facebook into TweetDeck and there’s a huge amount more to come,” the official blog announcement says.
TweetDeck 0.24 pre-release is available here. Its creators stress, however, that it is still a beta program under testing and should only be used at one’s own risk.
As a recent Twitter and TweetDeck adopter myself (@jr_raphael — come say hello), this is certainly an intriguing new twist. The need to login to multiple social services is always a pain, and being able to keep tabs on my Facebook account while watching Twitter is a pretty convenient integration. Plus, the ability to easily pick and choose which updates go to which network (and which updates go to both) is a great addition for me.
I do agree with Adam, however, about the potential privacy implications: While in actuality, I probably wouldn’t care, I’m not sure I like the idea of someone within my limited Facebook network tweeting out something I send there when it comes to the principle of it. Of course, someone could do that anytime — this just makes it an easier click-and-go option. In the end, it’s probably just a good reminder to us all that things we send on social networks, even ones that appear to be semiprivate, should always be considered public.
Looking forward to seeing what else TweetDeck has in store for the future. So far, I’m quite pleased with it and encouraged by the forward-thinking progress its creators are showing.
