Last night, Facebook announced a set of changes to its platform that make it easier for third-party applications to exchange data about users’ status messages, notes, shared links, and videos.
The more open Facebook’s platform gets, the more powerful it becomes for developers to build fun and useful applications with Facebook’s data, either onsite or off. However, several pundits have already jumped to the conclusion that greater openness with concern to status updates in particular spells trouble for Twitter, the bourgeoning microblog service that Facebook itself recently courted without success.
No one knows just where Facebook is heading with its platform or whether it’s serious about crushing novel new social networking services like Twitter or FriendFeed. It’s easy for bloggers to speculate that every incremental change to its platform or feature set is a devious plan to do just this. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, especially when there’s a lot to suggest that Facebook has a long way to go before putting any kind of dent in Twitter’s growing popularity.
Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch UK has outlined four particular ways in which he thinks Facebook “won’t kill Twitter”. First off, Facebook has a fundamentally different relationship model than Twitter. On Facebook, you create a simple two-way friendship with someone. On Twitter, you can choose to follow someone and you can be followed, but the following relationship doesn’t have to be bidirectional.
Butcher also suggests that Facebook is more interested in preserving ownership over its social graph than Twitter is over its own. And he points out that the replies Twitter users make to each other are usually public.
These are all fine points to make, and the technical differences he spells out certainly make it more difficult for Facebook to recreate the appeal of Twitter. But when it comes down to it, Facebook fails to challenge Twitter with this new platform upgrade because the two companies ultimately serve substantially different behavioral paradigms.
While Twitter and Facebook prompt users with eerily similar questions — Twitter asks “What are you doing?” and Facebook asks “What are you doing right now?” — their users don’t answer in the same way. By and large, Facebook users answer the question more faithfully than Twitter users. They actually provide information about what they’re currently doing, perhaps because they are prompted with a field that starts with something like “Mark is”. And the news feed lists their entries as action items (”Mark is having a bike ride” or at least “Mark likes biking outside”) under a tab called Status Updates.
Meanwhile, Twitter users have (by and large) decided to ignore the questioned posed for them. Instead of using the service to post real status updates — i.e. descriptions of what they’re currently doing — they use it as a public broadcasting system of sorts. It’s an efficient way for them to send out thought trinkets to an often ambiguous crowd of friends and strangers. And with @replies, Twitter morphs into a conversational medium, a big cocktail party where everybody is constantly eavesdropping on everybody else’s impromptu conversations.
There are, of course, exceptions to these generalizations. Facebook users do enter random thoughts in lieu of real status updates, and Twitter users do actually say what they’re currently doing. But the overlap is rather small, and it’s this smallness that undermines any attempt (real or imaginary) on Facebook’s part to steal Twitter’s thunder. Something behavioral about Facebook’s users would have to change, and it’s unlikely that these users — who are largely mainstream — are inclined to pick up the tweeting habits of a crowd that consists mostly of early adopters.
[Image courtesy of Doug Geivett's blog]
So Twitter’s no business model just got a little worse?
I think EVERYONE’s missing the Question that prompted this article!!
Listen up and please inform if you know:
simple Q: WHY, if twitter’s VC’s(assuming) Invested 20M in twitter..would they NOT take a 100M cash + SERIOUS stock options buyout?!
JUST the cash merits a sale, even if facebook stock IS overvalued.
This tells us that twitter must have a Serious business plan up its sleeve..I’d HOPE, anyway!
Thoughts?
When did they get a $100 million cash deal? Facebook wanted it to be an all stock deal with terrible terms (i.e. valuing Facebook’s stock at $15 billion).
did they get money from the Arabs
I still think facebook should just buy twitter!
cooljobsalways
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
Did anyone notice TechCrunch has passed 2 million feed subscribers… Great day for Arrington even through he is taking a break.
Why does the Android emulator take SO LONG to initialize. It’s driving me INSANE.
“Why Facebook Isn’t Poised to Steal Twitter’s Thunder” is a patently ridiculous headline.
Facebook adds more users in a week than Twitter has users.
Neither one is doing much on monetization, but at least facebook actually knows a fair amount about their users. Seems like half of twitter is bots.
So you’re suggesting that Facebook will trump Twitter just because it’s growing faster? I don’t see the logic there.
Here’s the logic: a company which gains more customers and makes money generally trumps those which gains customers lower and make no money.
There are a number of issues.
Twitter has a small subset of Facebook’s functionality.
In a social product, how fast you’re growing matters a lot. Twitter is still niche (get out of the valley and it’s only geeks)
Finally the key to making money with either of these products is the data they generate. Twitter’s problem is their data has almost no context. Facebook’s data is wrapped is a massive amount of data about its users and users relationships with one another. Facebook knows why people are friends. Twitter is filled with people who autofollow.
Facebook can make a real social graph. The “follower collectors” of twitter have made it’s graph meaningless.
>>”Twitter is still niche (get out of the valley and it’s only geeks)” –> not true any more. In fact almost all our followers know only the basics of technology. Lots of moms, marketing people, (lots and lots of bots), service providers, and soft-services/products. Even grandparents (although admittedly still a small %).
1) Twitter’s simplicity is what makes it so addictive to people. The “open network”/follow model makes it faster as well. According to Compete.com Twitter has been growing 800%+ Year-over-Year, FB 125% Y/Y.
Granted, it’s good for FB to go from 30M to 65M+ users, but further U.S. growth will hit a wall. Twitter still has lots of room to go at the higher rates. Also, compete.com and others don’t measure the “visits” by desktop clients such as Tweetdeck, which is increasingly being employed by the most active users.
2) It’s true that Facebook is a much more straight-forwardly social network, but with that comes the problem that people will perceive any violation of social context even more negatively than on Twitter. Makes it very tough to monetize based on their admittedly extensive data (remember the Beacon backlash?).
And don’t underestimate Twitter’s data mine based on user’s past tweets (including #hashtags used) and conversations, it’s not that hard to form a pretty detailed profile.
3) The days of a “clean”, real friends only social graph on FB are long gone. You have “friend collectors” going right up to the 5k limit as well.
On either, it’s most instructive to see who interacts with whom the most regularly, most in depth, etc. Relatively easy to find out on Twitter, all in a “walled garden” as proprietary data on FB.
Oh ya…
Follow me on Twitter, I follow back:
Twitter.com/AlexSchleber
Mark, you’re correct here. Twitter has far more potential revenue sources than Facebook simply because of the open nature of the community. It’s a far better tool for most businesses than Facebook – and that’s where the money is.
Over the next 6 – 12 months Twitter will roll out new features/tools that are directly to that audience specifically. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, people assume that the Twitter platform will not evolve because it hasn’t done so to date. Take a deep breath people, it’s gonna be ok.
I am one of those Granny users of Twitter, and I much prefer it to Facebook! Why? Because twitter is all about its users giving and sharing information 9almost like a news site) whereas Facebook is not. Nor do I like the stupid apps on Facebook because in order to work they not only want all your details but all your friends details as well. So I don’t use them. Twitter is entirely different. Its almost like an online messenger with users that aren’t your friends or family but nevertheless supply you with the latest! I have found out about the best apps and read the very latest news on stuff on Twitter. It’s ace so don’t think that us ‘ordinary users’ won’t realise its value, if I have then others will and it WILL become mainstream.
@technogran – You just may be the first Granny I have ever come across laying down a term like: “It’s ace”. You must roll with a serious crew.
All of you guys know nothing. FB and Twitter are already toast. They just do not know it yet.
Have you heard of Twitter on the clear?
Zoe – From a corporate perspective Twitter has much greater appeal than Facebook, for a number of reasons. And since the revenue model in this space will funded largely by organizations (corporate or otherwise), Twitter IMO actually has a much brighter/more profitable future than Facebook.
In the end it doesn’t matter how many users you have or how much info you have on them. If you’re competitor (Twitter) does a better job of helping vendors/clients reach their target market in a cost-effective way, you (Facebook) lose.
That is all premised on the assumption Twitter grows into the mainstream. Without mainstream penetration twitter has very little appeal to corporate clients. If their customers are not there Twitter has little value.
..but Twitter is going mainstream. It is too easy not too. When Hollyood personalities start using it en masse it is hitting the tipping point.
Zoe – All I can tell you is that my corporate clients are far more interested in participating in Twitter than they are on Facebook.
and the race begins!…
I think as Twitter becomes used by more people it becomes less quirky which will in turn drive volume.
Twitter was unreliable in the early days so it will be interesting to see how they cope with 1000% growth which is what they are seeing in the UK at the moment.
The first observation is dead on. Twitter is cute, quirky, and hip right now.
“steal twitter’s thunder”?
“dent in twitter’s growing popularity”?
“recreate the appeal of twitter?”
I am totally confused. By any measure I can find on the web, Facebook has ten times the traffic and users as twitter. And by all accounts I’ve read, its revenue blows twitter’s away as well.
How is twitter winning anything?
Twitter and Facebook are currently very different services. The question is whether Facebook will evolve to a point where at least part of its functionality mimics that of Twitter. If that happens, Twitter could become redundant for all those Facebook users out there who might have used Twitter as well. Hence, the stealing of the thunder.
Just because Twitter is smaller than Facebook doesn’t mean it’s not a threat that Facebook might want to squash. Or put differently, Twitter may have provided a model for online communication that Facebook wants to appropriate.
FB can’t be a place to connect “real” friends (their words) and also be like twitter. The 2 are mutually incompatible.
I like Facebook’s ease of use over Twitters. I am still struggling with basic stuff on twitter
Twitter is many times easier than facebook… no questions… just give it a little time and you’ll get the hang of it.
Let’s be honest – The reason that Twitter users have largely stopped posting/tweeting “what they’re doing now” is that virtually nobody cares about a status update that lacks context or relevance. It has nothing to do with which question is being “asked’.
Twitter’s true value is rapidly moving beyond this simple concept of status updates toward the concept of a “Public Broadcasting System” that you eluded to.
In the future there very well might be features/apps that can leverage status, but that operate in the background and don’t require the user to publicly broadcast that info. I can’t wait to see how this unfolds.
I have always loved this debate. I do think that facebook has a bit of a stranglehold on the “people’s network”. but when it comes to rapid information sharing and retrieval, facebook’s complex architecture makes it an oil tanker compared to twitter’s speedboat of content stream.
two very different services that are battling it out in the early rounds…
http://www.tech...itter-facebook/
Mark,
You inadvertently made an argument that Twitter doesn’t actually have much thunder. I’m not sure I agree or disagree — I have to think about it more — but the key sentence in your post is here:
“Something behavioral about Facebook’s users would have to change, and it’s unlikely that these users — who are largely mainstream — are inclined to pick up the tweeting habits of a crowd that consists mostly of early adopters.”
Facebook is for the mainstream, Twitter is for the early adopters. And as you said, “the overlap is rather small.”
Or in other words, Twitter doesn’t have much thunder to steal because their service is confined to a small community of early adopters. Facebook, meanwhile, actually has the thunder — they’re take on Twitter is the one that the mainstream will end up using (because they already are).
(Note, I argued essentially this exact point in a post on ReadWriteWeb last May: http://www.read..._everything.php ).
Good point. Twitter’s core concept might not have mainstream appeal. But maybe Facebook thinks it does and is indeed trying to be the company that makes microblogging a mainstream activity.
If Twitter leadership would get with the program and stop promoting it as ‘What Are you Doing’ vs making new friends globally, that small change would do wonders to fuel growth.
I love this site and what TC does for the web community in general, but honestly this never ending ticker tape parade for Twitter must come to an end.
That Facebook has any thunder to steal from Twitter implies that there is thunder there to begin with. Until your grandma knows what Twitter is, like she does Facebook and Google, you can’t even compare it on a level playing field with those heavyweights.
And Twitter has a long way to go to get there. There’s no concrete evidence of a true business model, and still no indication that the product is moving beyond its fan base of technoelites who are comfortable with cryptic usernames and hash tags. What’s more, there is little being done to crack down on celebrity impersonators. How is the new user supposed to discern the real Stephen Colbert from some assclown wannabe?
That’s all well and good if Twitter is just a mindless source of entertainment. But, no, Techcrunch wants us to believe it’s a serious news source too…
http://www.tech...dia-on-twitter/
(Incidentally, the article quoted above was the most disrespectful pieces I’ve ever read on this site, and I think the authors ought to be ashamed of using an unfolding tragedy to promote Twitter in such a self-congratulatory fashion.)
While Twitter might have the edge over Facebook is in mobile, it’s the universal appeal of Facebook — the way it connects real people with their real identities — that makes it such a success.
I used to be a Twitter naysayer for the longest time until i started using it. It’s simplicity belies it’s potential. Twitter is not just a rt news source(eg NY/river crash) but a collective thought stream and global communication platform. And it’s *Open* — millions of people developing 3rd party apps will provide value significantly higher than any Closed-walled garden system ever will.
More people will always use Facebook than Twitter. Twitter has one feature, Facebook has a thousand. Whether Facebook will kill Twitter isn’t even a question, because they aren’t on the same level. Facebook doesn’t need to kill Twitter. This post is stupid.
I agree with the person above me in every way. Step your game up TechCrunch.
i will laugh my azz off if facebook end up eating twitter lunch. because they facebook did offered to buy them. i guess evan wants a hugeeeeeeeee payday
I totally appreciate what the folks at Twitter are trying to do – and the options are by no means closed to them – but I think that eschewing Facebook’s offer will go down as the worst decision they ever made.
Yes, I know that the offer was in stock. I also know that there’s very little *tangible* downside for them – assuming a continued stream of VC funding (not in doubt) to ride out the current economic situation, continue to add users, and sell themselves to a dumb media company once the ship has righted itself. So, the future is generally bright for Twitter, it seems – regardless of what happens WRT Facebook
However, there is no way that Twitter will be able to encroach on Facebook’s market. Consider what would happen to Twitter tomorrow if Fb turned off the Twitter-status-posting app. Let’s say, for a “security violation”. Would you stop updating friends on Facebook in favor of the unrelated masses on Twitter? Doubtful – unless you are already a bit of a blowhard.
The other real weakness of Twitter is its interface. The US is definitely moving past the SMS world to something more “appy”, driven by the proliferation of smartphones. This disadvantages Twitter because the social network apps are more fully featured, run better and are guaranteed to have more use/more repeat use.
We learned that with the evolution of our product – rmbrME: mobile contact exchange. We launched it as an SMS service for maximum usability, but we didn’t really get traction until we built an iPhone app – now the world’s most popular of its kind: – http://beamME.net/. The functionality is *mostly* the same, and SMS is more universal, but the interface made all the difference. smartphone apps are – simply – more fun to use.
So, while I think that Twitter will be *fine*, it will never rise to the level of mass-market, game-changing, “socially networked” meme that affects everyone. No matter what the tech pundits believe.
I guess the question is: does that matter?
-Gabe
twitter’s decision to not take FB stock pales in comparison to FBs decision not to take CASH from yahoo.
everyone now is just sitting back and watching FB burn through cash by the barrel…the more popular the service gets, the more desperate for cash they will be since every new user simply accelerates their burn rate.
at some point the VCs will realize FBs voracious appetite for cash threatens their own solvency and will bail on this money pit. google or msft will buy the company for under $1 billion.
I really hate Facebook–reminds me of being in high school. Twitter’s openness reminds me of the freedom of graduate school. Which I suppose means MySpace is something like Junior High. Lots of people are on Facebook, but to me it is like a prison…in the long run it will fall of it’s own weight, which is substantial.
yes, facebook has turned everyone into fourteen year-old girls…and not in a good way. the bickering, attention-mongering, desperate attempts at popularity….sad to see “adults” regress to this behavior
what i love about facebook is how this arrogant cluster of young geniuses has crafted a business plan practically impervious to new investors…they lose money on every user, and they are adding more users every day. the more people sign up, the faster facebook approaches insolvency. go upload some photos! at some point they won’t be able to find VCs to subsidize their perfectly ruinous model
Thanks for posting what was in my head. I agree. It does worry me that twitter has no revenue model, because I have been so drawn in. On the other hand, I can barely stand to be on Facebook for any amount of time, even though I have actual meatspace friends who are on there, and not a single one on Twitter.
It’s also silly to compare FB with Twitter. These are two different business models. Whether you like FB or not has no part of why you would or wouldn’t use Twitter. That being said, again, WHAT IS TWITTER’S BUSINESS MODEL?
what is FBs business model? they lose money on every user…the more users they add, the more money they lose. if i had to use one word to describe FBs business model, it would be “chernobyl”
Wither twitter… its model is limited at best. I don’t really see the business being particularly long for this world more than the technology is. And even then, there is no sense of reliability on all the people tweeting in to a particular topic of interest (such as when the snow fell in London and all the people tweeted in that they were also experiencing snow in their area, in order to plot a snowfall graph that covered London). I’d still rely more on the weather report from BBC News than on Twitter. There’s no measure of quality control on its service, there’s no value in what the statuses of people are (I don’t give a crap about the rest of Twitter’s users’ statuses) and there is no revenue model at all. The only thing to leverage at this point is basically the technology in order to update statuses on things of relevance and importance when it can be QC’ed. Maybe it’s just one massive polling device for the global community. SOMEONE CORRECT ME IF I’VE MISUNDERSTOOD TWITTER since I don’t really use it other than what I read about it.
An older generation of users are more likely to sign up on Facebook (or other social networking sites) than Twitter so its major user base ends up being tech-savvy people (teens & 20-30somethings generally) and has limited use. What’s 140 characters of status lines going to do for me and how does it affect my life? I have no freakin clue!
You seem to think you know a lot about Twitter without using it. I don’t think you can know about it until you live with it for a while. I’ll explain how I see it. Twitter has short messages, but the point is to link to the places you put things…pictures, video, blog posts. You can put all that on Facebook, but who can see it? Some folks like that closed system, but to me it is a wall like a school locker only friends can look at. I don’t think that is the future.
If there is a metaphor for Twitter it would be a giant grapevine. Not only the gossip that is silly, or hurtful, but the gossip that gets a meal to a family in need, or a perspective from the ground when a country is in need. Just look at the breaking tweets website that lends some humanity to the news. Somehow a DePaul University journalism student had the bright idea to bring hyperlocal content to a global scale. http://breakingtweets.com/
That’s what there is to love about Twitter and how other social networks don’t have the flexibility and openness to meet the future. And I’m not a young person either…I suppose I just act like one.
Sorry but your wrong! I am a granny and an ordinary user and I LOVE twitter! Far more than Facebook. It just takes time that’s all. Yes at first I couldn’t see the attraction to just posting ‘notes’ to people, but now I really see its worth. I am on twitter almost all the time now and never bother much with Facebook.
Lynn I am in total agreement! I have opted out of Facebook- boring! Twitter and Posterous- seem to me more creative and more in tune with fast moving collective consciousness- It is not about revenue – it is about sharing ones inner self and growth
No matter what Facebook does they will still be stealing your intellectual property through the small print in the End User License Agreement.
I also don’t see their customer service getting any better either.
I cut down on my Facebook usage heavily in the last year or so because of many things like the ones above, but also because everyone is using it for business and seeing mediocre results.
I personally like MySpace as they have more value from an SEO stand point.
Sometimes you have to go against the flow and stop doing what everyone else is doing to realize there is a better way.
Stick with Google products and Twitter and you will be better off.
Have a good week ahead.
Facebook recently changed their EULA so the above comment is no longer 100% factual.
I joined twitter as a means of communication with customers of my organization. Why facebook when I can easily communicate with such a large community group so easily & quickly? Funny we are considered geeks! I know my circle of associates would definately define me as mainstream versus geek or technology oriented. And no, I’m not not looking for feature rich-I like the simplicity of quickly scanning twitter entries on my blackberry! As the director of my company, I have no time other than quick scans.
Every pr, advertising and marketing firm I’ve worked with highly recommends twitter as a public relations tool. I’m also very pleased with the growing corporate presence for my own use as resources. My 21 year old daughter is a fan of facebook because of her college friend network but as a new college graduate, she is already on twitter looking at graduating to the corporate world and creating a new community of contacts.
As for me, my status is mainstream airport exec who LOVES twitter.
Materialism is falling by the wayside- ideas, connecting to other realms of existence- spirit-awareness of why we are here! why do you think life is so short here? even if you live to 100 years old that is a drop in the bucket- I am 71 years young am i considered older? Surely something inside you tells you that you have been here many times before- so what is it that you have come to learn or desire- or let go of- do you really take anything with you when you depart this plane of existence? your awareness and experiences- and what a gift life is! share your love and your joy on twitter or not -
amen…you grok twitter..let people follow you
I think what Facebook is doing is good for it, especially in looking forward to the near future. Twitter is setting a great example not only for Facebook, but for all other social networking sites with simplicity, easy access, and a fantastic user interface. I see that Facebook is slowly catching on and I believe that the end of Facebook is NOT in the near future.
every social network is just a nightclub on the web. at one point people would line up for hours to get into studio 54…in the end they couldn’t pay people to go in.
such will be the dynamic of the social network market. it will be viciously fickle…the cool kids will always want to find a place away from the squares
i commend google for staying out of it all, its a huge waste of energy
Wow. Seems like 90% of the people that read this block are virtual soapboxers with links back to their egoboxes.
Twitter will never become mainstream beyond dorks without a life and people selling a brand.
How much does TC own in Twitter? This coverage is so out of proportion to its usage.
Twitter is the future of communication, It will replace email. And soon. Facebook will always be a social network. Simple as that. http://www.tweetube.com/ht
If David can go against Goliath with a stone, Twitter can go against facebook and myspace for the throne!
I use both services and find them both useful on different levels…I’m standing behind the little guy, the underdog…GO TWITTER!
@cliffdailey
Facebook is awesome for communication with genuine friends.
Twitter is awesome for broadcasting to the world at large.
Different purposes, different uses.
people on twitter are there because they already think facebook is passe. as soon as gramma signed up for facebook, all the cool kids wanted to go elsewhere. welcome to the suck, facebook, gen-y is such a fickle bunch (just ask aol, yahoo, and every other brand dumped as it became uncool)
Facebook may have the numbers but the user interface on it seems pieced together and even if grandma is signing up for it she won’t understand why not all her families news is being added to her news page, it’s just a bad site all around.
I cant wait to see a real app with this integrated called fbtwt
I think EVERYONE’s missing the Question that prompted this article!!
Listen up and please inform if you know:
simple Q: WHY, if twitter’s VC’s(assuming) Invested 20M in twitter..would they NOT take a 100M cash + SERIOUS stock options buyout?!
JUST the cash merits a sale, even if facebook stock IS overvalued.
This tells us that twitter must have a Serious business plan up its sleeve..I’d HOPE, anyway!
Thoughts?
That is the burning question. Regardless of whether Twitter is “cool” or has “social value” from a global scale, it takes $$$ to run any website business and sustain and support the traffic usage and load on it. Again, what is the business plan that Twitter has to make some real revenue? There’s no arguing that FB also needs to find its foothold in what its business model needs to be but the real question is still “What is Twitter’s business model?” not “What is Twitter’s value to all the ‘cool’ kids jumping onto the next big thing?”
There will always be something else beyond Twitter that will be the next big thing. And it still seems to be the technology, not the site, that will bring about the true value of the company behind it. Remember, the people behind Twitter aren’t here to stroke your egos or bring about social change, they want to get paid and paid WELL.
I find Facebook more reciprocal than Twitter. Love them both, though.
I think, soon facebook and twitter will be our really
“second life”
Nowadays, people can stand hours in front of them.
Your blog is super. So are your photographies. They make me hungry. I have spent a nice moment when seeing them. Thanks a lot.
OK, first off, when you become a fan of something or someone on do they become a fan of you? No. So it’s not always bidirectional.
Haven’t you already noticed that facebook has been twitter-like for quite some time. Take their blackberry application for example, *beep* new fbook update! “Joey and Sally are engaged.” That’s what just happened. Maybe not at the moment, maybe it happened 4 hours ago but it’s a live updating system.
I am an avowed Late Adopter. I have a real life, so I let the rest of you play with all the new stuff and weed out the garbage. I’ve used Twitter for awhile, and I’m bored with it.
WRT “Twitter and Posterous- seem to me more creative and more in tune with fast moving collective consciousness- It is not about revenue – it is about sharing ones inner self and growth”
HAH. Haven’t you gotten it yet? No one cares about your inner self and growth. They like watching the train wreck. It’s curiousity. Collective consciousness? lol. How about a stream of nonsense.
Twitter has a big concentration of ‘influencers’ (SEO, SES, Site Owners, VCs, all of the left, etc) and that’s why it makes a lot of noise. FB actually has normal users, has all the spectrum of an IQ scale. It’s like comparing a fine microphone for new kinds of recording and well, a mall.
I prefer to use facebook. It has more facilities and has cool design.
Dear God, not more “applications”! More Mafia Wars more Movie Quizzes More banal invites to check which celebrity I’m most like. Great!
Twitter is a far more simple, actionable and lightweight model that’s not necessarily about who your friends are. I follow people for who they are, or what they say, not because we are friends and Facebook can make that tough. Finding good people to follow is much easier on Twitter.
Fundamental differences like these mean the two can coincide to me – “for Apple to win Microsoft doesn’t have to loose” kind of idea.
fb means more and more overhead. The time you have to allocate to read the “manuals” meanwhile delivers a whole identity on Twitter.
fb is getting more and more microsoft-ish while Twitter stays mean & lean and delivers r/t communication.
Twitter for work; Facebook for play.
I don’t follow my friends on Twitter, I follow people who interest me. Likewise I try not to post about work on Facebook.
They are so very different in so many ways, but I worry that recent media coverage of Twitter will drive more people to use Twitter for mundane status updates and it will dilute Twitters blogging edge.
Yep – Apples and Oranges …. http://tinyurl.com/acs2xw
It’s good to see Facebook opening up their data. I don’t think they have a choice. I see a haunting similarity between Facebook and the former glory of AOL.Their stregnth and potential weakness lie in the same place – a key word in your final sentence – “mainstream”.
There’s a broader chasm right now, which you can see even by reading through the comments on this thread:
Facebook is about talking to friends, Twitter is about talking to strangers.
I’m a marketing guy, not a techie, but is seems like Facebook could easily create a Twitter-like application on the order of Tweetdeck that works off of Status Update.
And since “talking with friends” is a more popular proposition than “talking with strangers” it would do quite well. Especially if they looked at some of the things people really like about Twitter (ease of sharing links, etc.) and grafted that on.
Depends on how hard it is to create the media. People spend more time watching TV than creating video that anyone would want to watch. Similarly, a person will someday emerge with 1MM twitter followers and I suspect that if you look at the product of users x followers on twitter and compare it to total friend connections on facebook, twitter will be greater. At some point, twitter is going to promote their top tweeters to the twitter home page and people will also completely anonymously consume top twitterers.
small correction to the above post.
Users x followers x posts-per-day will be greater on twitter than total friend connections on facebook x post per day. That is, people will, in the aggregate spend more time reading tweets than reading facebook status messages. That is my prediction anyway. We will see.
Short of a celebrity Twitterer like Shaq, who would realistically get over 1 million followers?
And celebrity twitterers are broadcasters. They’re not having conversations.
Facebook and Twitter status messages have diverged and do serve two fundamentally diferent needs. It is not just that facebook offers symmetric relationships (friends) and twitter is asymmetric (follow), it is mostly because on facebook, everyone is locked down and confirms the requests and on twitter, everyone is open. Fred Wilson has an interesting post pointing out that facebook has re-aligned their entire user experience around the status message.
Oh, yeah. Of course FB will not kill Twitter. Like car industry didn’t eliminate horses completely, they still ride’em, you know… but not to the office and not to a date and not to shopping.
the point of mike’s post is that you twitter and facebook status messages for different things so there is no reason to believe one would kill the other.
But who’s said the point was right?
Andrew
1. How hard would it be to get users to start using FB status updates the same way they use Twitter? With a free-standing app that only showed status updates (and basically mimicked Twitter with a couple of improvements thrown in) I think that would not be too hard.
That’s the real crux of the debate here: how difficult will it be for FB to get its users to start treating SU like Twitter? And NOT the Silicon Valley crowd, but the millions of 35 year old moms and dads who have joined up in the past six months.
2. Does anyone outside the Silicon Valley bubble really want to talk to large numbers of strangers? I don’t think so. I think that’s a really limiting proposition and one that so many can’t see past. I wrote a piece on MP Daily Fix about this a month ago called “Scoble Blindness” which the subject himself endorsed.
3. Twitter’s future may well be as a news feed, the AP wire feed of the future. I have a separate Twitter account set up that only gets updates from broadcast news services (e.g. NY Times, BBC, CNN, etc.) and it’s quite useful… and quite a different experience from my regular twitter account that I use to self-promote and talk to friends.
Makes a lot of sense to me
If Facebook were facing drastic budget cuts, it would be forced to turn into Twitter.
Yeah maybe. But it is exactly Twitter that didn’t generate a single dime in revenue.
Twitter only has about 1.5 million active users, where “active” is loosely defined as having one friend, one follower, and one status update. About 40% of Twitter accounts don’t follow anyone. 40% only follow 1-10 people.
Twitter can limp along for a while, but Facebook is bleeding money from every orifice. It may have to sell itself for bargain prices to stay alive.
If Facebook starts to second guess and look over it’s shoulder it will ultimately have trouble. Sure you need to get a sense of what people want to stay relevant but as long as it fits your mandate. Most of the time this approach just means that they shoehorn stuff in quickly without real thought of how it will effect the platform in the long run. Facebook and Twitter are two different animals. Facebook has mass appeal and is very easy to get a grasp as to why someone might want to use it. Twitter for non techies take convincing and is vague at first glance. I teach business and people how to use twitter for that very reason. I can’t say that there would be much business in the same classed for Facebook.
Facebook should continue to make their platform better I agree but don’t try to be too many things to too many people.
JP
My question is that will facebook gain revenue from this one? How about twitter? When will they start a full-blown revenue generation?