When iTunes Ping originally debuted in September 2010, for the first few hours Ping let you connect your Facebook account with your Ping account, making it easy for you to find your Facebook friends who are also using Ping. Unfortunately, that’s as far as the integration went, there was no ability to share things with your Facebook friends.
Several weeks ago, iTunes Ping introduced Twitter support, allowing you to connect your Twitter account, see who else you’re following is on Ping, but also goes one step further by allowing you to tweet your recent activity on Ping (Liked items, as well as other posts you make).
Thanks to this integration, it’s possible to pull this data back into Facebook, sharing your Ping likes and posts with your Facebook friends. Sure, it’s hacky, and completely messy, but it works, and is better than nothing until Apple and Facebook kiss and make up.
First up, some prerequisites;
- An iTunes account, obviously. (If you need to create one for free, try this)
- A Twitter account – this can either be your main account if you’re happy to Tweet things from Ping, or a separate account just for Ping
- A Facebook account
Now that’s all sorted, first fire up iTunes Ping, open up the Edit Profile page and follow the steps to connect your iTunes Ping account with Twitter. Once that’s done, fire up Facebook and allow access for the SupaSync application. Click the ‘Sign in with Twitter’ button and use the same account you linked to Ping earlier.
Next up, we’ll set up some filters to ensure that your Facebook friends aren’t inundated with your tweets (if you’ve created an account just for Ping, this won’t matter so much). From the ‘Sync Options’ area, choose the second option, making sure that only tweets with keywords are posted. In keywords, make sure that you add the ‘#itunes’ keyword (without the quotes) – these are what the iTunes Ping tweets contain.
likes Strawberry Swing by Coldplay on Ping http://t.co/eDmwPNf #iTunes
And with that, we’re finished. Fire up iTunes, and ‘like’ or ‘post’ an item. With a bit of luck, shortly after seeing the tweet on Twitter you should see it appear in your Facebook news feed.
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