Monday, April 13, 2009

How my social network update system works

There are 2 main content feeders:
No, I do not actually update my status on any other social network directly, it all feeds from the 2 sources above. You can subscribe to read my blog via RSS (you can also read my blog directly on the web) and you can choose to follow me directly on Twitter (you can also subscribe to a RSS feed of my Tweets, if you like). Here's where it gets interesting:
  • I use Twitterfeed to update my Twitter followers with my blog posts. Once a hour, Twitterfeed checks my blog RSS feed, finds new titles, and sends a Tweet on my behalf with the title of the post and a link to the post using SnipUrl. Basically if you follow me on Twitter, you get all of my tweets plus all of my blog posts as tweets.
  • Twitterfeed also updates my LinkedIn profile via Ping.fm because LinkedIn doesn't allow Twitter to directly update my status. Basically, if you are linked to me on LinkedIn, which I consider my professional social network, you get my blog posts as status updates, but none of my tweets.
  • The Facebook Twitter Application updates my status on Facebook with every tweet, so if you're a friend of mine of Facebook, you get all of my direct tweets plus all of my blog posts via Twitterfeed.
Just typing this out made me realize how totally confusing all of this is -- I think I'm going to look at boiling it down to just ping.fm and Twitterfeed: ping.fm can update everything (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and Twitterfeed can update ping.fm with all my blog posts.

Once I have it optimized, I'll let you know.

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