Sep 14 2011
Syncing Facebook, Plus, Twitter, and Linkedin via “If This Then That” (ifttt)
Google plus has been a great service so far, cleaner and easier to use than facebook. I personally prefer the streamlined interface. But there is a problem, a huge problem, not many people want to leave what they are comfortable with. Facebook works well and is very popular, making it hard to leave.
So what can those of us who want to embrace this new technology do? Either we have to be extremely redundant, posting our messages multiple times, or find some type of syncing service.
One limitation of Google Plus is that they have no APIs to post to plus from outside. You cannot send an SMS message, or have facebook update your plus status.
Several plugins and systems have emerged to take your Google Plus status and push them to Twitter and Facebook. But even those have been lacking in that none of those solutions would work from the mobile web app or the phone apps.
Today, however, I found a solution to all of these problems! A mixture of two services. The first service, which we will discuss briefly, is called plu.sr zipl.us. This service simply takes your Google Plus public feed and turns it into an RSS feed. You just use a special URL with your Google Plus ID in it.
The main part of this plan is found in a service I found today called “If This Then That.” This service is awesome and worth exploring. IFTTT allows you to create multiple conditional statements that work to connect two of the many channels available. Channels are basically APIs to different sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, RSS, YouTube, InstaPaper, etc. The service is really easy to set up, so let’s get to it.
The Instructions
The first step (assuming you already registered for ifttt) is to get your Ziplus ID. Go to plus.google.com and click on your name next to your profile pic. Then in the URL grab the really long number, this is your id.
Now go to If This Then That and create a new task. Click on the word “This” and select the RSS feed icon, then select the trigger “New Feed Item”. For the URL enter http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=117243117130917765448 (but use your really long number, not mine) http://zipl.us/JonZ/feed (but use your ziplus username, not mine).
Next hit the Create Trigger button, then click the word “That” to set the action that happens when the trigger is triggered.
Select the Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin icon and follow the directions to activate the channel on your account.
If you select Facebook or Twitter you will have to choose the action item. Select “Create a Status Message” and enter {{EntryContent}} {{EntryURL}} in the box.
If you are setting this up for Twitter then you will want to use {{EntryTitle}} instead, as the plu.sr service uses a truncated version of your status message for the title.
That’s it, you are done!
You will have to remake the task per service you want to update, and the tasks are only checked every 15 minutes, so it is not instant, but it works. Within 15 minutes of making a public post to Google plus from the web or your phone it will be sent to the services you set up.
On your task list you can click the right arrow button to view more details and then there is a check now button you can hit. Hit this to test that your task works without waiting 15 minutes.
Hopefully with this mini tutorial you can get your Google plus status messages going to facebook and twitter, as have an understanding of how ifttt works so you can create other tasks.
Have any unique ideas for ifttt tasks? Share them in the comments below!
Update 18 January 2012
Due to Google Plus API changes, plu.sr no longer works. I found a different service that works the same way called zipl.us.
