How do I integrated Facebook into my Seesmic Desktop Twitter client?

The previous version of Seesmic Desktop I was running was a bit of a disappointment, though it was - and remains - beta software. Nonetheless, the inability to follow or unfollow users through my twitter client proved to be a real pain, causing me to constantly pop open my Web browser so I could gain additional control over my posse and try to pay more attention to people with smart things to share.

I also use Facebook (don't we all?) but generally don't pay a ton of attention to it. Maybe every day or two I pop in to see what's going on, but really that's a disservice to my many friends on the service who use Facebook to share what's going on with their lives.

Having said that I will also say that I have taken to hiding updates from people who mirror their Twitter updates on Facebook: If I wanted to follow their tweets, I'd do so on Twitter.

Anyway, when I read that the latest version of Seesmic Desktop included the ability for me to not only easily post updates to Facebook (explicitly, not a "mirroring" of my tweets) but keep track of what's going on in the world of my Facebook circle too, I was sold.

Since I think you might be too, let me show you how easy it is to integrate Facebook into your Seesmic Desktop interface, and the resultant data you can see.

First up is that I already have two accounts configured, my @DaveTaylor personal account and my movie industry news channel @FilmBuzz, as you can see:

To add Facebook, I click on "+" and get a window with a variety of new account addition settings:

Clicking on the "Add your Facebook account" button, I then choose "Apply" from the buttons along the bottom of the window.

The program then verifies that's what I really want to do:

Seesmic Desktop now connects with Facebook's API server and shortly starts to ask me exactly how I want to define the relationship between my Facebook account and the client, starting with:

I'm lazy and want things to just work, so I choose "Allow" and move to the next possible way that the utility can communicate with Facebook:

Letting it access my news feed means that I can keep track of my Facebook pals directly from within Seesmic Desktop, which is what I want. I click on "Connect".

Next up, it asks if I want to actually allow the desktop client app to publish updates to my Facebook stream:

I do, of course, because that's kind of the point of me adding my Facebook account. Once I do that it finishes up the configuration and then leaves me with what is possibly the world's easiest way to post a status update to my Facebook profile:

As you can see, I type in a brief message then can choose my Facebook account or either of my Twitter accounts as the destination for that particular message.

Finally, wondering how the program shows what's going on in the world of Facebook? Here's a snippet:

Simple, elegant, and extremely useful. Thanks, Seesmic, I like it!

You can try Seesmic Desktop for yourself, it's a free download and runs within the Adobe Air universe. Start here: Learn more about Seesmic Desktop. You can also read what the author of Seesmic Desktop, Loic Le Meur, says about Facebook integration if you're so inclined.

I'd also like to let you know that I have quite a bit of Facebook help here on the site and that I also have an Ask Dave Taylor Facebook Fan Page that I invite you to join.