The Age of Awkwardness and Privacy
Just as companies go through awkward stages of growth, so too can communities, users and consumers.
That’s the stage we’re in within the realm of social networking. Do we use Twitter primarily, or Facebook primarily? Most settle for both. Do we make our Facebook privacy 100% private? We’re torn.
It looks as if, no matter what you decide, Facebook is becoming more and more public with every new feature, announcement and concept. Thus, whatever you decide, there are going to be a lot more people “Twitter-izing their Facebook experience.”
Facebook Has a Boring Layout
You know you’ve taken a good, hard look at Facebook by using one measurable metric: yawning. Yes, Facebook can be bland and boring. The font is extremely small, the colors are blue and white and the arrangement is routinely micromanaged and re-arranged so that users will become outraged for a bit, until they realize yet again that they have little say in what Facebook does. Only the thousands of programmers do–and even they’re bored (Diaspora). Add the never-ending spam flow of Farmville into the equation and you’ve pretty much captured the awkward stage of Facebook.
Plus, the problem we all face with Facebook (no pun intended), as well as the other networks, is that they’re silo’d into their respective networks. If you use the web services by default, you can only see your followers in Twitter, and your Facebook friends within Facebook.
If you’re like me, and enjoy the openness and “feel” of Twitter; yet don’t want to leave your Facebook friends behind, this guide will serve you well. I’m going to outline a set of ways that will allow you to “Twitter-ize” your Facebook experience. This will combine some apps that aggregate tweets, as well as apps that literally allow you to customize the look and feel of Facebook by adding backgrounds and layouts to your experience, (which is the main topic of this blog).
Enough of the chit-chat. Let’s get started:
4 Ways to Twitter-ize Your Facebook Experience
1) Step One: Go Public
Yes, we are in the midst of a contested time in the web. Does privacy exist? Well, according to Mark Zuckerberg a couple weeks back, no. Yet, there’s a group of nerds in New York who are proposing that yes, privacy does still exist on the internet. But will the casual user be able to actual adopt their product? I think not, yet time will only tell. Whatever your view, it really doesn’t matter if you’re aiming to Twitter-ize your Facebook profile. And the reason is because Twitter is completely open.
So step number one with Twitter-izing your Facebook’s Profile Page is to make your profile 100% public.
Think real hard before doing this. If you truly want to Twitter-ize your Facebook Page, you have your choice. If you prefer to keep some things private (like me), keep your settings as they are.
If you decide to go public, follow these steps:
- Log in to Facebook
- Under “Account” (in the top right) click the Privacy Settings
- Then click “Personal Information and Posts”
- In the right column, you’ll see drop-down options for specific elements within Facebook. Twitter is 100% public; thus, you’ll want to set these to “Everyone”
2) Step Two: Pick up Some Twitteriffic Facebook Apps
The first app you’ll need to add is Twitter’s official Facebook app. You can find it here: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/ This allows you to connect your Tweets to Facebook so that whenever you Tweet, your friends will see it within Facebook, as well.
If you’re a bit more unconventional, you can try this app called Tweeter, which includes a variety of other features that power-users would prefer.
There’s also Tweetsync, which allows you to sync all of your tweets and status updates; it also carries some advanced features with it.
And the last app you’ll want to pick up, especially if you’re a Fan Page owner, is Involver, which provides you with all of the above features, as well as providing support for Fan Pages.
3) Step Three: Make Your Short Bio Represent Twitter’s Length (140 Characters)
We all know Twitter revolves around short, brief status updates. Your goal should be to liken your updates and profile to that of Twitter. Short, cute and sweet. Love comes in small packages–and Twitter represents that with its cute layout, whereas Facebook’s layout isn’t cute. Thus, I’ll show you how you can fix that.
First, go to your Twitter profile, and select the text within your bio. Copy that text and then navigate over to your Facebook profile.
Under your profile pic you’ll find an area to change your bio. Change it, updated it and link it to your Facebook profile.
4) Step Four: Get a Twitter Background on Your Facebook Profile
You can get a Facebook Layout with Twitter’s background color and style using PageRage’s Create Your Own Layout Tool.
First, you must download PageRage’s plugin, which you can find by clicking here.
The second thing you’ll need to do is find the Twitter background that you want on your Facebook profile. In order to do this, you have two options:
- You can use your current customized Twitter Background by saving it to you computer.
- You can browse over to Twitter’s standard backgrounds by clicking, “Settings” and then “Design.” Once you’re there, select a background that you’d like to apply to your Facebook profile. After this, right-click the background and select “View Background Image” and then save it.
Now that you’ve got the Facebook Layouts plugin (found here), scroll over to the Create Your Own Layout Tool.
Within the tool, follow the steps and upload your saved Twitter background to your Facebook profile. You can fade in the title bar, select various elements, and change things according to your preference.
After this, it will apply your layout to your Facebook background and you’ll be all set. Again, you need to grab the plugin before you can do this, which can be found at the bottom and top of this post.
Conclusion
That’s it! It’s really quite simple to Twitter-ize your Facebook Layout. Have fun with it, add some flair, and remember to tell your friends if you’d like them to follow in your footsteps.
Best of luck, and tweet on!
If you have any suggestions, ideas or any other apps, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
Photo Credits:
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Good post, thank you! It’s helpful to know some techniques for personalizing your Facebook profile.
One important point regarding the Twitter background which uses a third party plug-in is that the background will work only in the user’s own browser, not in other users’ who do not install the plugin. For other users to see the custom background they will also need to install PageRage’s plugin.
Of course, Facebook could introduce their own skins so everyone could have their own custom backgrounds. But then, that would be a bit too much like MySpace, and I don’t expect Facebook will be going down that road anytime soon.
The link for the Facebook backgrounds in Step 4, comes up as being shortened more than once and possibly dangerous. Could you share the actual link with us?
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