Twitter Taps Into Facebook And Linkedin Networks
Looks like Twitter is getting aggressive in growth plans. They are pushing the convenience of finding friends on other services — Facebook and Linkedin — and following them automatically on Twitter.
Josh Elman, Following your friends and colleagues
Today, we’re improving our Find Friends section to make it easier to find and follow the people you already know — your friends on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn — who use Twitter. Our Facebook app, which launched in 2007, now shows which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and lets you follow them instantly and save them to a list. The app also lets you post your Tweets to your Facebook profile and now, to one of your Facebook pages too. With the Tweets application by LinkedIn, you can see which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter and follow the ones you choose right from the app. The app also lets you save your LinkedIn connections as a list, post your Tweets to LinkedIn, and add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile.
UPDATE: The Facebook app cannot currently access your Facebook friend list. We believe this is an issue on Facebook’s end.
An ‘issue’ on Facebook’s part? More likely an intentional blockage (apparently confirmed by MG Siegler).
So it seems the sunshine-and-flowers era at Twitter is over. They are moving into aggressive actions seeking to grow, and directly pushin at the other majors in the space. This follows the now prophetic Fred Wilson ‘filling the holes’ post that has led to a frontal assault on a long list of players that were constructing meaningful businesses on Twitter’s periphery, like Bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and Twitpic.
Facebook is trying hard to change its architecture to parallel Twitter’s, and now Twitter is mirroring the aggressive moves that Facebook has been famous for.
Going to be an interesting few years ahead of us.
[disclosure: I am an advisor to Bit.ly, and I have a financial shareholder interest in Bit.ly and Linkedin.]
- Twitter Adds Facebook and LinkedIn to Find Friends Feature (appscout.com)
- LinkedIn: It’s who you know (independent.co.uk)
- Twitter Upgrades Facebook App To Let Users Follow Facebook Friends, Currently Unavailable (globalthoughtz.com)
