Affects Friendfeed entries as well

Jul 30, 2009 08:21 GMT  ·  By

A Facebook issue affected a number of users a few hours ago as they started seeing their posts on Twitter or Friendfeed automatically posted on their Facebook Wall as well. Anyone with the Twitter or Friendfeed apps for Facebook installed was hit by the problem but it has since been fixed.

“Earlier this evening, a small Facebook bug allowed a handful of apps to publish to the stream on behalf of users who had previously authorized the app. The situation has now been resolved, and all application settings will remain intact for users,” Facebook's statement read.

The issue became apparent after a great number of people tweeted that their Facebook Wall was being cluttered with Twitter and Friendfeed posts regardless of their preferences. Twitter and Friendfeed both provide official Facebook applications that offer integration with the social network. These apps provide users with the option to automatically forward any update to their Wall as well. Most users don't have this option enabled for obvious reasons – they don't want their Facebook profile filled with content they have made available elsewhere.

Earlier in the day though these settings were ignored and the apps began pushing entries from Twitter and Friendfeed to the Wall, leaving many confused and even upset. It wasn't clear at the time where the problem was though there were some indications that it was on the Facebook side. Most users disabled the apps as a temporary solution and Friendfeed disabled the feature until the problem was solved. The issue has now been fixed, with Facebook admitting it was a bug on its side.

“We have received numerous reports of excessive FriendFeed posts showing up in Facebook this evening. While we are not 100% sure, it appears to be an issue on Facebook’s end due to ignoring application settings. We have disabled all FriendFeed updates to Facebook until we are sure the problem is resolved,” Bret Taylor, Friendfeed co-founder, wrote.