Dylan Davis published a method of routing the Facebook update statuses of both you and your friends to Twitter a few days ago as a Facebook note. I thought this was something people might be interested in trying out, and Dylan was happy to let me republish his update status routing recipe. Enjoy!

Here’s a recipe for routing all your and your friend’s Status updates from Facebook to Twitter. See also my post about doing the same with Ecademy and other services.

Things you’ll need:-

• An Open ID
• An RSS feed for just your Facebook status updates. Go to your profile, click on minifeed, see All. Click on Status Stories. There’s a Subscription link bottom right.
• An RSS feed for your friends’ Facebook status updates. Friends – Status updates from the drop down at the top of the page. There’s a Subscription link bottom right.
• A dummy Twitter account. Create a new Twitter account and follow it from your main account.

Route your Facebook updates so when you post it also posts to Twitter.

• Login with your OpenID into Twitterfeed.
• Create a new entry. Put in your main Twitter account ID and Password and the RSS for your status updates.
• Update 30 minutes, Include title only, Include Item link, Prefix each Tweet with FB.

Now each time you post a status update on Facebook, within 30 minutes it will create a Tweet from you on Twitter with a link back to your profile on Facebook.

Route your Friends’ Facebook updates so when they set their status on Facebook, you can read it in Twitter.

• Login with your OpenID into Twitterfeed.
• Create a new entry. Put in your dummy Twitter account ID and Password and the RSS for your friends’ status updates.
• Update 30 minutes, Include title only, Include Item link, Prefix each Tweet with FB.

Now each time any of your friend’s post a status update on Facebook, within 30 minutes it will appear in your Twitter Friend’s timeline with a link back to their profile on Facebook.

You can use the same basic technique for any service that has one or both RSS feeds. It works better with services that include the name of the poster in the title. So Facebook, Plazes, Jaiku but not Pownce. AFAIK, Twitter is the only service with an API for updating a status externally and a 3rd party RSS to post service. Which means Twitter ends up as the best aggregator for all your services.

So the next question is which service you should use as your main update. I’m finding myself doing most of my updates on Twitter with occasional updates on Facebook and Ecademy to keep my profile on those services fresh.

Thanks again, Dylan.

Originally published Monday 18 August 2008.

IT consultancy Thoughtworks Australia has launched a new initiative aimed at encouraging more girls and young women to pursue careers in technology, Girls in IT (website no longer online).

The big questions are, why are girls not interested in studying technology subjects at school, and, what can be done to motivate them to do so?

Women account for less than 15% of the people working in technology in Australia, and 52% of the total population. Girls are just not choosing to study technology-related subjects. Findings from a study conducted by the NSW Department of Women reveal that 35% of Year 8 girls choose ICT subjects compared to only 17% of girls in Year 10, a 50% decline in take up.

Girls in IT also aims to “influence the influencers” through getting parents, teachers, and careers advisers, excited about IT careers.

Originally published Friday 8 August 2008. Updated Sunday 8 May 2022.