Now that Facebook has rolled out its new real-time homepage, which in many ways feels like a crossbreed between Twitter and FriendFeed and has allowed third-party developers to access status updates on the service, it only makes sense for developers to try to bring some of these functions to the desktop. After all, it was the rise of the early desktop clients that fully revealed the potential of Twitter to its users, and a lot of developers are hoping to do so for Facebook as well. Seesmic released a dedicated Facebook application last week, and Tweetdeck just released a new version of its popular Twitter client today that now integrates Facebook status updates.
Tweetdeck
The developers of Tweetdeck just released a new beta version of their popular Twitter client that now integrates updates from Facebook, and allows users to post messages to both Twitter and Facebook. In the new version of Tweetdeck, your Facebook updates get their own column, and when you post updates to Twitter, you can choose to route these messages to Facebook as well. One nice feature of Tweetdeck’s Facebook integration is that it puts a little green dot next to your friends’ profile pictures when they are online, which allows you to initiate a chat with these users directly from within Tweetdeck.
If you are already using Tweetdeck, the update will automatically be pushed out to you in the next few days, but if you want to try it out now, you can download it from here.
Seesmic for Facebook – Just the Beginning
Seesmic’s Facebook client is currently very straightforward and reminiscent of the earlier Twitter clients in that it only presents you a form for writing your updates and a column with your friends’ updates. This, however, is only the first iteration and we have heard that Seesmic is planning to combine both apps (and drop the Twhirl name in favor of Seesmic) in the near future. Seesmic also plans to integrate other social networks like MySpace in the near future.
Currently, Tweetdeck’s Facebook integration is a bit more fully-featured than Seesmic’s, but both are still at the beginning of their development cycles and we will keep a close eye on both. We also expect to see more Facebook applications in the near future.
The Twitterization of Facebook – A Culture Clash?
From what we have seen, both Seesmic and Tweetdeck are clearly interested in taking the twitterization of Facebook to the next level, though it will be interesting to see how Facebook’s current userbase will react to this. Facebook’s and Twitter’s cultures are still very different and Twitter users have developed their own set of rules over the last year or so (think ‘@’ replies, retweeting, etc.), while status updates on Facebook have a very different feel and don’t necessarily invite two-way communication the way Twitter does.
