Twitter seeks closer integration with Facebook

Twitter has added new Facebook integration

While Facebook focuses on emulating the success of its growing rival Twitter by adding contact updates to users' profile pages, Twitter is busy promoting stronger integration with the social networking giant.

Twitter's most popular application, TweetDeck, will now give users the option of setting up a Facebook column in order to view contact updates from both sites in one interface. TweetDeck v0.24.1, which will also allow users to direct their updates to Facebook, can be installed now.

Meanwhile, Twitter has launched new homepage house adverts, one of which promotes Twitter Widgets. These let users set up a Twitter feed on web pages such as Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and TypePad.

Facebook attempted to buy Twitter for $500m (£357m) at the end of last year. Following its failure, Facebook has concentrated on adding a number of site updates to target Twitter's success.

These include recently updated homepages to allow users to view constant news feeds from organisations or public figures, as they do on Twitter. The new design also lets users immediately see everything that is shared by their friends.

In what could be a further move to copy Twitter, Facebook will now enable users to open up their profiles to the whole network.

"None of your existing privacy settings have changed," said Facebook engineer Mark Slee in a blog post. "This is an additional setting for those of you who wish to share with a broader audience."

Users can opt to open up any of the following elements: Profile, Status Updates, Links, Wall Posts, Basic Info, Personal Info, Education Info, Work Info, Photos of You and Videos of You.