I wanted a way to be able to update my Facebook profile, my Facebook IvanExpert fan page, and my Twitter feed all at once–and to be able to choose, on a post-by-post basis, where I wanted the posts to display.

Twitter doesn’t have any built-in functionality to allow Facebook updates from its website, so that’s no good.

Facebook does have a few apps that allow sync with Twitter, but none of them work perfectly. The official Twitter app for Facebook is permanently broken, plus it’s hard to set certain posts to go only to the fan page versus the profile page. Other Facebook apps will pull a Twitter post if the post begins with #fb but that doesn’t look professional.

Today I am trying out and liking a new piece of software for Mac called Seesmic. (It also works on PCs.) It’s a free application that you install and run on your Mac.

Some of the benefits of Seesmic that I’ve discovered already:

1. It allows me to see my Twitter feed, my Facebook profile page feed, and my Facebook fan page feed all at once, in individual columns. I can also add columns for Twitter replies directly to me, and private tweets (although for now the 3 columns are plenty to keep track of).
2. For each individual post, I can decide whether to post it to my Twitter account, my Facebook profile page, and/or my Facebook fan page.
3. But there is a way to put default settings so that, for example, if I want most of my posts to go on Twitter and Facebook fan page only, it’s quick and easy.
4. It allows me to choose which site I want to use to shorten my URLs, and which one I want to handle my images.
5. If I want, it can alert me via visual and/or sound when a new post comes up. (I ended up turning this off, too annoying.)
6. I can set it to launch on computer login.

And things I haven’t figured out yet:

1. Can I easily RT (retweet) from Seesmic?
2. Can I easily send a personal Twitter reply from Seesmic?
3. Can I create custom columns based on priorities I set?

So far I’m liking Seesmic because it’s extremely basic, not too many bells and whistles, yet it does the few things I need. Goodbye, unwieldy Facebook apps!