Barefoot Web Design Blog

My good friend Ben Jordan, who is one of the founders of Big Bad Collab, recently posted an article to their blog titled, “Gmail: Integrating Your Social Media.” I liked it so much that I asked him for permission to post it here online, as I think it could be a real time saver for people who use Gmail, and juggle back and forth between posting on Twitter and Facebook.

Before I copy and paste his blog post here, I’d like to tell you how I currently post to Twitter and Facebook. There are literally a gillion different ways of posting to Twitter, as many developers have created their own Twitter clients that allow you to post to Twitter from your desktop, and from many other sources. Here’s the proof.

I currently use Twhirl when I’m on the PC, and Tweetie when I’m on the Mac. If I want to post an update only to Twitter, I use one of those to do it. In my opinion, posting to Twitter via a desktop client beats the heck out of having to login to the Twitter website every time you want to post something. By posting to Twitter via a desktop client, you save time by not having to login everytime. Instead, the Twitter client logs you in automatically after you’ve fill out your login information within the Settings.

To post to Facebook, most people go to facebook.com, and then login with their username and password, and type in their status update. This can be a tedious process, especially if you are someone that likes to update your Facebook status often. And if you are someone that wants to post the same status update on both Twitter and Facebook, then the logging into both sites can be really tedious.

So, to kill two birds with one stone, I installed a Facebook application called Selective Twitter, which allows you to post your status update to Facebook via a Twitter client by simply ending your tweet with #fb. By doing this, you can simultaneously post to Facebook the same status update that you’re posting to Twitter. Saving time…

So, when I received Big Bad Collab’s latest blog post, I was glad to see yet another way to save time in posting to these 2 social networks, and this time from Gmail! Score! Here’s what they posted…

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We do a lot of work with social media. Everything we do we try to make it as efficient as we can, keeping it simple but effective. We think “innovation” is often seeing the complex as simply as possible. In the spirit of gathering up our most used tools, this post should help you with some of our favorite tools. One of the best ways to form an opinion is simply to experience it for yourself, but we love this functionality. If you use Gmail, and we think you should, then this integration of Twitter and Facebook will rock your world.

These directions should work for you if you are interested in trying it out. If you do try it out, feel free to drop a comment below and let us all hear what you think–has it helped you? Is Google going the right direction providing all these integrated choices? We’d love to hear your opinions.

1. Activate “Add any gadget by URL” in Gmail Labs — Login into your gmail. Go to the “Settings” menu at the top right. Click on the “Labs” menu choice within Settings. You will find it near the bottom of the list.

2. Now go to Settings –> Gadgets. Here you’ll find a place to add Gadget URLs.

3. Add the TwitterGadget App. Any iGoogle gadget will do actually, but I like TwitterGadget, a fully-functional Twitter service for iGoogle and Gmail. This lets tweet from the sidebar or open up your Twitter with all of your tabs intact. It even supports multiple accounts (cool!)

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml”

4. Add the Facebook Gadget. In the same way you added TwitterGadget, you can add Facebook to your Gmail. While Google has an official Facebook gadget, it doesn’t play nicely with Gmail, so try out the app Ari Milner uses: Facebook Gadget by iBruno. It will expand into the rest of your Gmail for easy Facebook management (just click the ‘expand’ on the Facebook widget and it will expand into your Gmail pane).

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml”

5. Voila! Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail are now all wrapped up into one for your convenience. Simple and doable.

6. Final Step. Add us on Twitter @BigBadCollab, @marksnewton and @benjordan. We would love to connect!

So how do you post your status updates to Twitter and Facebook?

Tags: Facebook, Gmail, integration, social media, Twitter