Will Twitter-to-Facebook Publishing Make You Tweet Less?

Many social networkers have found it too burdensome to constantly update their statuses on both Facebook and Twitter. As a result, some have been neglecting Facebook. Instead, they keep their friends on both sites informed by setting up Twitter to automatically post tweets on Facebook, and they never have to visit the site.

So far, it has not been easy to do the reverse and send Facebook status updates to Twitter. But that is changing. Will new tools encourage people to neglect Twitter for Facebook?

Of course, it is unclear whether Twitter-to-Facebook publishing has actually resulted in a loss in traffic for Facebook, and many Internet users actively use both sites or have chosen Facebook over Twitter. But as competition heats up between Facebook and Twitter, Facebook does not want to lose valuable traffic as it tries to build advertising revenue.

So, last week, Facebook made it possible for businesses and celebrities, though not individuals, to syndicate their updates to Twitter. And an app released Monday by SocialToo allows anybody to publish Facebook updates on Twitter.

“This is for the people that really prefer Facebook and enjoy posting updates from Facebook, but also have a Twitter account they want to manage,” saidJesse Stay, the founder of SocialToo, a Salt Lake City start-up company that makes social networking tools.

Mr. Stay said the app would be “very powerful” for heavy Facebook and Twitter users like himself, because they can decide on which site to publish their updates on a post-by-post basis. SocialToo will probably add the ability to post to other sites from Facebook as well and plans to add tools to publish links and photos to Twitter from Facebook, he said.