Dustin Schmidt

Westchester Real Estate, Internet Marketing SEO, and allegorical anecdotes.

Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, TweetDeck, and WordPress: What A Happy Family

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m still a big fan of David Cramer’s Lifestream plugin for WordPress. I have seen it at work and it is tremendous. I still will install, configure, and edit it on any project calling for social network fusion within a WordPress blog. It does require some serious tinkering with if you are on a shared host and you’re running a bunch of plugins. You absolutely have to have xCache installed for it to run smoothly and not all shared hosting plans allow php opcode caching (I still don’t get that since it does limit their bandwidth!).

Having said all that, and that was a lot, I also like a very basic, simple blend of TweetDeck and friendfeed. TweetDeck is an outstanding real-time social network browsing application that allows you to send tweets and friendfeed streamlines all of your social networks into one place.

Here are some simple steps to getting everything going so all you have to do is send a tweet using TweetDeck and have it sent simultaneously to Twitter and Facebook, and then have all status updates including everything posted in Facebook and other popular social media networks supported by friendfeed sent to your blog.

1. Go to friendfeed and sign up for free using your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

2. Once registered, click on the settings link below your username. and add the services you want to post in your feed widget (I have Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube).

3. Edit Facebook to include your Facebook My Links URL and make sure “My Facebook Status” is unchecked under the include menu (I will explain why shortly).

4. Now click the Tools & Widgets link on the bottom of the page. Select the widget you like and copy and paste the code into your text editor (keep in mind the width of your sidebar on your blog and alter the width of the widget or sidebar so they match up accordingly).

5. Login to Facebook and install the official Twitter application on FB. Now all tweets will be sent as status updates on Facebook. Sweet.

6. Once your satisfied with your widget code, copy and paste it into a new text widget in WordPress and save. Now your tweets are sent in four directions: to your self-hosted WordPress blog, Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed. Also, you have all your YouTube videos and Facebook links sent to your new friendfeed widget. There are no overlapping updated statuses because you unchecked the “My Facebook Status” in friendfeed.

This is a great way to reduce bandwidth while still letting everyone know what’s going on across your networks.

If you have any questions or would like to add to this tutorial please let us know your thoughts. I hope this helps.

By Dustin at

In Blogging, Social Media, Technology, View Comments

  • Annon
    Ignore imaps!
  • Way to go Dustin! Alot of time putting this post together I am sure. I'm just wondering why you wouldn't have just made an iMap of a graphic with all your icons on it? Remember how you would hyperlink a certain x and y axis? I remember those days from '96 when I was using Hot Metal 3.0 by SoftQuad. So this is another way for sure. Anyways, thanks for taking the huge time it took to get this one out. Because it all started way back when you were first learning how to do it. Now all anyone has to do to replicate your success, is just read this post! It's really appreciated! You might want to repost it later on Twitter using hash tags. That gets it to the right people. i.e. #webdesign #wordpress #wordpresshacks #blogging. Like that. Cheers!
  • Hey Robert, Thanks for your suggestions and support. It's funny because I want to be invloved in everything when I work on a site: from front-end to back-end to SEO and I've taught myself nearly everything I know (with a lot more to digest). I will definitely start looking at iMaps. To be honest I've heard of them, but not to familiar with how to make them. Take care.
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