With spring around the corner and weather warming up in the Midwest, this could be one of the slower news weekends I have noticed. Perhaps most of the weekend warriors are still recovering from SXSW. Either way here are a few news items you may have missed this weekend if you didn’t spend it next to your computer.

Twitter Turns 3

From the tweet of Jack Dorsey, “At 1:02pm Pacific today, Twitter is officially 3 years old!”

Congratulations to the Twitter team on making it three years and we are looking forward to many more. If you haven’t noticed our blog depends on it.

Salesforce.com Announces Twitter Integration

Over the weekend Salesforce.com announced they have extended their Service Cloud tool to include Twitter integration. Service Cloud is a customer service tool allowing its users to monitor conversations about their company on social media platforms. Twitter integration adds another level of real time monitoring and the ability to join the conversation instantly.

This is a great move for Salesforce.com, but the other side of me wonders if Twitter was planning on creating anything like this. Evan Williams has hinted at expanding Twitter services to include business tools, and if so, does this mean Twitter is already too late?

[via Read Write Web and also covered by TechCrunch and Webware]

More Facebook Versus Twitter Analysis

With Facebook’s new redesign there have been a number of blog posts comparing it to Twitter. The conversation continues to go back on forth on who should come out on top, but the most convincing argument for Facebook was posted by Jesse Stay on his blog Stay N’ Alive.

In the post Jesse outlines the features of Facebook’s Lexicon and outlines a few steps Facebook needs to take to move in for the kill. Read more about it here.

While Twitter fans were waiting for the new integrated search bar to be rolled out to their profiles, Facebook fans are awaiting the new home page update to be applied. Facebook announced the beginning of the rollout for new home pages on March 9, but I just had mine updated on Friday (March 13).

Inside Facebook’s Justin Smith (@justinsmith) wrote up some first impressions of the new home page design, including a mention that “the stream emphasizes status updates, like Twitter.” Perhaps Facebook is still slightly bitter about Ev Williams and company turning down their buyout offer last November?

The look of the new home page feels very much like Twitter to me, mostly because they were one of (if not the) first to use the vertical stream of posts with an update box at the top.

However, the way content filters in and the options users have to take action looks much more like FriendFeed.

Even with a 33% growth in traffic over the past month, Twitter has a long ways to catch up to the number of users on Facebook (currently 175 million worldwide). As such, most people will probably see Twitter as “oh, like updating my status on Facebook”, rather than Facebook status updates looking like an expansion/copy of Twitter.

Although I personally use Twitter more than Facebook and FriendFeed combined, I wouldn’t mind seeing some in-line commenting, liking-functionality or ways to group users/content on Twitter that are already found on Facebook and FriendFeed.

Have you gotten the new Facebook home page layout? What are your thoughts so far? Are you updating statuses in both places?

Earlier this year Mark wrote a how-to post on syncing Twitter with your Facebook status, but as of late I’ve found the app (officially built by Twitter) to be troublesome, either in setting it up initially or feeling like too much information was headed across the wire. To remedy the situation, I quickly uninstalled the app and have since resorted to using Selective Twitter, another Facebook app that let’s you choose selectively which Twitter updates will be sent across to Facebook.

Like Ping.fm, but Specific for Twitter to Facebook

The service is almost a bit like Ping.fm, as you’re updating a status in one place and having it auto-post to another. The trick to using Selective Twitter is that first you must sign up to use the app. Sign in over on Facebook and then punch in your Twitter username on the Selective Twitter app page.

Once you’ve plugged in your Twitter username, just tag any tweets you want to end up on Facebook with the #fb hashtag. These updates will be seamlessly pulled into your Facebook status and can be catered (written) more specifically to apply to both audiences (Twitter and Facebook). Or, if you’re sharing a photo or link and want more exposure than just posting to Twitter, hashtag it and send the info to both places.

Give Yourself More Control Over Updates

I don’t use Facebook often, but I have gotten a few comments before based on my Facebook status, so using this app allows me to more easily share that information with the Facebook friends who want it, instead of them seeing a constant stream of all of the interesting articles I come across or resources I share with the audience I have built up on Twitter.

While this is a wonderful app (built by @andyy), it still doesn’t solve my (and others’) ultimate problem: I want to enable my Facebook status to update my Twitter account.

Pingdom released a study today showing the downtime it had calculated for 15 different social networks during 2008. While they didn’t cover many of the microblogs we cover here, we thought the study was very interesting and is helpful to see how downtime plagued Twitter last year in comparison to other major networks.

Some key findings, according to Pingdom’s report:

• The only two giants in the test, Facebook and MySpace, recorded very little downtime
• Only 5 social networks maintained an overall uptime of 99.9% or better: Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, Xanga, and Imeem
• 84% of Twitter’s downtime happened during the first half of 2008

Twitter

Overall Uptime: 99.04%

A majority of Twitter’s downtime came in the first half of 2008. Q2 had the most downtime with 48% of all downtime being recorded in that quarter. Downtime was drastically reduced beginning in August and fail whale sightings became much more infrequent.

Montly downtime for Twitter in hours

Facebook

Overall Uptime: 99.92%

Facebook had 100% uptime in October and December which is quite impressive considering it has over 150 million users. Like Twitter, a majority (68%) of Facebook’s downtime occurred in the first half of 2008. No single continuous outage lasted longer than 25 minutes.

Monthly downtime for Facebook in hours

Methodology

Monitoring was done using Pingdom’s uptime monitoring service. Home pages were loaded (HTML only) every 5 minutes. If the page couldn’t load in 30 seconds or an HTTP response of 404 or 500 was returned, then the site was considered to be down. Downtime had to be confirmed from two different locations, otherwise it didn’t count.

View the full report [pdf]

If you have a friend that you’re following on Twitter and on Facebook, you’ll sometimes see their status updates coincide. It’s not voodoo magic, it’s a Facebook application created by the fine folks at Twitter. It’s meant to bridge the gap between the two services and allow you to update both in one fell swoop. Today, I’d like to show you how you can set that up with your own accounts.

Step 1: Log in to Facebook

Step 2: Locate the search box in the upper right corner and type in “twitter” – hit enter or click “Search Facebook”

Step 3: The top result should be the official Twitter application – you can tell because the developer is Twitter. Click “View Application” or “Twitter“.

Step 4: You may or may not be taken directly to the following screen. If you aren’t, click “Go to Application” and you’ll be back with us. Now, go ahead and click “Allow” to authorize the Twitter app to be added to your Facebook account.

Step 5: Authenticate yourself to the app

Step 6: Once authenticated, you’ll see your timeline embedded into Facebook. You can update your status from here, but if you’re reading this blog chances are you’re going to be doing things the other way around (eg Twitter to Facebook). The thing we’re looking for here is the button labeled “Allow Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status“.

Step 7: This screen confirms your choice, so click “Allow Status Updates”

At this point, the app has been added and the bridge should be live. If you have no intentions of updating Twitter from Facebook, skip to step 11. Otherwise, forge on.

Step 8: You’re going to want a quick way to update Twitter, so repeat Step 1 – but this time you’ll see a result. Click the result labeled “Twitter”

Step 9: Once you’re at your Twitter page, look into the applications toolbar and you’ll see an option for bookmarking Twitter. Click it.

Step 10: Depending on how many apps you have, Twitter might not show up in the toolbar. If it doesn’t, click the Applications box in the toolbar and drag Twitter into the section labeled “Bookmarks”

Step 11: Update your Twitter status, then come back to your Facebook account (either Home or Profile works) and make sure it updated. If all went well, it will have.

(that’s a Photo Booth effect, not my real face)

A Few Notes

• Don’t worry about replies being sent to Facebook, because they don’t get sent. If you start out an update with “@username”, it won’t show up. If you deviate at all from that (space after @, @name later) it gets sent.
• Mike claims stopping the app from updating your Facebook status is as easy as removing the application, but I’ve heard from multiple people that they can’t get it to stop. If you remove the app and it doesn’t stop, please contact us.

Engaging your followers is a simple way to add value to your Twitter account. Part of the beauty of Twitter is asking questions and getting answers. The ugly part of getting answers is compiling them. This is where twtpoll takes over and makes your life much easier. It lets you ask a question and throw in some possible responses, which will eventually turn into a poll. You can share that poll on Twitter or Facebook, and it even comes with a shortened URL and your poll title.

Head over to twtpoll and enter your username, the question, and some possible responses. When you submit the form, you’ll be given direct links to tweet it or update your Facebook status (you just have to be logged in). There’s no handing over your password or anything else shady. The only thing that’s missing is the ability to add a response on the go in case a user feels the list of responses isn’t sufficient. If you need a quick way to create a poll – with some cool Flash effects in the results – give twtpoll a try.

Please take our poll regarding your ability to microblog at work (and then view the results).

Accounts to Follow

@felipecoimbra (developer), @twtpoll

As reported by Kara Swisher on All Things Digital, talks between Facebook and Twitter over an acquisition deal have ended and no agreement has been reached. Sources say “Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock,” but talks broke down “over price and the typical concerns about integration and costs.”

Facebook Brought Twitter to the Table, But Couldn’t Hold On

The talks had been initiated between the two companies by Facebook in mid-October, with top execs and investors all involved in discussions about bringing the two together. Other reasons the deal was turned down are attributed to feelings from Twitter’s investors that “the startup should still take a shot at building its revenues as well as it had done at building its growth.”

Similar to Their Extraordinary Growth, Investors Hope the Same can be True of Future Twitter Revenues

Though Twitter experienced many infrastructure problems earlier this summer, recent months have seen Twitter shining. New numbers in the article state Twitter having “about six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year.” These new numbers are actually twice those of what bloggers and consultants have been quoting for the past several months.

Lack of Revenues was a Factor in the Deal

The problem of Twitter not having any current revenues was also an issue for Facebook. Despite operating for two years with $20 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions and well-known Silicon Valley figures such as Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, Twitter has yet to turn out a business model. They’ve talked about paid corporate accounts and an ad-supported version, but nothing official has been released.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m glad Twitter passed on the deal. For me, Facebook and Twitter are two very different beasts. Although Facebook has tried to implement microblogging into its feature set (with it’s own Status Updates), it still hasn’t quite captured the more simplistic essense of microblogging. In a way, Facebook feels more like FriendFeed, a constant stream of activity from friends and contacts. Twitter and microblogging are much more streamlined and simplistic.

Here’s to hoping Twitter is able to find a business model that lets them keep it that way.