14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook will soon enable users to publish their posts on Twitter as well. After linking the two accounts, any public post can also be pushed to Twitter straight from the Facebook site.
This has been a requested feature by many power users, but Facebook passed on it so far. With the roll-out of the Subscribe feature last week, Facebook's view on this has changed.
Facebook has confirmed the change, in fact it revealed it itself in a document (PDF) for developers, and will likely unveil it at its F8 developers conference.
Facebook has enabled Pages to post to Twitter for a long time now. Any new post on a Facebook Page can be pushed to Twitter automatically.
But Facebook has held off on enabling the feature for regular users. Perhaps it was for privacy reasons, most things on Twitter are public, perhaps it just didn't want to help out a competitor.
It's not the first time Facebook and Twitter have been at odds and Facebook was usually the more aggressive player.
It may just be that Google+, which borrows features from Twitter and Facebook and is a potential threat to both, scared both social networks, especially Facebook, enough for them to band together.
Some of Facebook's recent changes are clearly in response to Google+, particular the subscriber feature which enables users to sing up to public updates from anyone on Facebook without actually friending them.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself merged his Facebook Page with his personal account and converted his 'fans' into subscribers.
Google+ also enables users to follow other people without a mutual relationship requirement. Since the subscriber feature was enabled, there has been quite a lot more activity on Facebook from public features.
Having the ability to publish on Twitter as well may entice even more people to post something to Facebook and forward it to Twitter, something the giant social network would very much love.