Dare Obasanjo writes about Facebook’s news feed redesign and decides it is a big mistake. He’s backed by some 94% of users responding to a Facebook application poll, and cites internal gossip that Mark Zuckerberg thinks user feedback is irrelevant. I think Dare is premature in this assessment.
First of all, Facebook is not copying Twitter; it’s copying FriendFeed, who originally copied Twitter. Where Obasanjo describes two different models – phone book and micromessaging – there already are three, including personalized aggregation or what I will call the micro-portal. Facebook already had part of the last functionality, so its opening of the micromessaging stream consolidates all three legs of the tripod.
In doing so, Facebook is counting on the same relative inertia that Twitter has so carefully cultivated. The calculation is that 175 million people are less likely to move away from something than they are to wait and see what is going to happen. Twitter decided they could stonewall third parties once a critical mass was reached, parrying attempts to build competitive subservices by slowing down API access. Today’s Twitter to FriendFeed delay: a reported 40 minutes.
