It appears that over the past few weeks, Facebook has widely activated a feature that allows you to text Facebook to update your status, message your friends, or send a poke on the go. You can opt to receive texts with status updates, messages, pokes, and wall posts from selective friends right when they happen. This is all part of a larger Mobile strategy that Facebook has begun to promote actively on its Mobile page.
If you take a look at Facebook’s new Mobile landing page, you can now “Learn About Mobile Texts,” and activate your account and mobile phone to both send and receive SMS messages to Facebook. Facebook has devised a set of shortcuts for users to write the texts so they can directly update different parts of their accounts or message certain friends. For example, if you want to say you are at John’s party on your status update, you would type “is at john’s party” as an SMS to update your status. If you want to write on John’s wall, you would send a message saying “wall john smith happy bday.” All SMS messages are sent to Facebook at “FBOOK (32665).” You can also choose who you want to get SMS updates from by subscribing to SMS updates on their profile page
This is just another example of how Facebook is trying to be more like Twitter. Twitter has always let users send and receive Tweets via SMS. In fact, originally, Twitter was designed for integration with SMS, hence the 140 character limit. Facebook recently redesigned user homepages to look and feel more like Twitter, adding real time-support and a tweaked interface.
UPDATE: I was mistaken, the SMS feature is not new but the mobile landing page that packages all of Facebook’s Mobile offerings is brand new. Because of this addition, its only now that people are beginning to realize many of these mobile features even exist.
Hat tip to Patrick Hawkins.
Twitter and FB war has officially started!
@Dealyzer,
“War” sounds about right. I’d ask why pick the one feature from Twitter that they were loosing the most money from (wasn’t one estimate $1000 per year per user for outbound SMS’s?), while FB has it’s own cash worries?
No matter, I’ll be adding that to our site’s FB feature set if they make that available to third party apps
I find it amusing to watch Facebook try so hard to be like Twitter. Every month FB is implementing a new design that Twitter has been rolling with for a while. I just would like for someone, especially FB, to give Twitter a serious offer for a buyout.
Yeh Twitter is just SO revolutionary, no one has ever created a text messaging service before. Before they came along, I’d never heard of such a thing.
sounds expensive for facebook.
Yeah, I guess I’ll never figure it out. They still have no plan on how to create some revenue and throw away cash for that.
And it’s so true how badly FB wants to act like Twitter. I’m pretty sure it’s a bit too late. But nice try.
Facebook had this before Twitter was ever around.
Facebook texts have been around for at least two years. I was using 32665 to update my status messages and get friend updates before I joined twitter in April 2007. Promotion of existing features does not equal copying twitter.
agree with @David Litsky.
When you say this has been “activated” you mean it’s been around for years?
In fact, the page from the first image above hasn’t changed substantially since mobile was first launched.
Leena, you should really update your post. This is not new at all.
My last name is Hawks, not Hawkins, but thanks for the mention anyway
No correction or anything?
There is no reason why Facebo0k can’t have a successful SMS, but twitter will remain number one, and there is nothing facebook can do about it. Google needs to acquire both companies for $50 billion possibly. There is no recession with web 2.0 http://iamned.com/blog/ S&P 500 closes above 900
Twitter number one? Do you realize Facebook has 200 million users? If Facebook organizes itself, Twitter is going out. Having friends in high places can get Twitter so far. Their best bet is selling to Google.
Just check the response Oprah gets on her Facebook page compared to Twitter. Twitter is too limited to stand alone.. just updates.
Facebook provides updates notes, pictures videos amongst others.
u said notes… lol
they’re called blogs!
my $0.02
uh, this is nothing new at all. i’ve been doing that on facebook for a very long time. it wasn’t until a year or so ago facebook launched m.facebook. before that, the only way to update and get info was through sms. facebooks’s been on the ball for a while.
But everything old is new again. Or did you not get the memo? Such is the word of Sanjay.
Facebook doing the inevitable and becoming MySpaceTwitterLinkedin YAY!
Only problem of course that MySpace allows for more customizing, Twitter is better and LinkedIn actually useful. Doh
Daniel
Well…it’s all just “let’s catch up with each other’s features” at this stage.
Social networking in active/passive mode … I think this is what differentiate to some extent fb with twitter.
Now with the phenomenal growth of these two companies they just want to make sure the other doesnt invade their turf.
The same way 2-way communication between known/unknown people is also one factor – I guess in twitter there is more noise and you have to filter out relevant content. fb is more private
Like David Litsky says, SMS on Facebook has been around for years. This is nothing new. Only the link under the profile picture is new.
I seriously thing this is ridiculous!! No matter how much Facebook tries, it will never be Twitter… and as far as I can tell Twitter is not trying to be Facebook. I love both sites because they are both great at what they do. I have a profile on both and love them both for different reasons.
Alex – Professional Cutie
http://www.mioamoredesign.com
or “think” =P
In my opinion, facebook should have done this a long time ago. I’d love to use Facebook SMS but it was setup for messaging back and forth and not for ease of use. This might have changed but messages sent over facebook crom from a number that’s always different (via sms) so I can reply to them and that goes back to the person that sent it into their inbox.
if facebook had a dedicated number that I could send updates to, reply to type “message john smith” and then type a message. that would be better but it’s always been a pain in the ass to use. Twitter’s 40404 was just easy.
As mentioned above, FB has supported updates via their mobile # for quite some time now. And I’m fairly certain they have had live feeds since the redesign last year, at least since the presidential election. This was the Live Feed option on the News Feed but users are now opted in by default. Check the iphone app, it still has the Live Feed view.
Facebook’s had SMS features since 2006. I distinctly remember turning them off because getting texted every time someone did anything was getting annoying.
Facebook has jumped the shark
This means an (eventual) end to Twitter.
I agree with most of the other posts above. Facebook has had great SMS capabilities that most people don’t even know about: https://registe...ook.com/mobile/
For quite some time (at least a year), you could:
1) update your status via SMS
2) seemlessly go from SMSFbook email with other users (which I love)
3) process friend requests via SMS
4) write on someone’s wall via SMS
5) get a friend’s contact info via SMS
All of these are extremely useful features for a social network (possibly except #4), but they were not surfaced well in the UI. Instead, Facebook chooses the one feature that is least valuable about Twitter and is difficult to monetize on because the recipient is already paying for the inbound SMS’s.
I seriously question Facebook’s product management leadership at this point. After the well publicized false steps (and ensuing user uprisings), people continue to use the service.
I think the media hype has given Facebook a case of Twitter-envy. With millions of users logging in daily, why doesn’t Facebook just ask their what they like and what they don’t???
Question: Does anyone know a great SMS gateway? I would love to implement something like this on my site.
WHAT?!? I’ve been using this since I started on facebook about a year and a half ago. The only new feature about it is the ability to specifically subscribe to a particular user’s updates.
and thats what makes FB seem like its emulating Twitter. When I had my FB account I always knew they had the feature available but I didn’t want everyones updates hitting my phone.
Still waiting for Facebook to allow T-Mobile for notifications. What’s the holdup again?
As others have duly noted this is really not new feature set. It was however not well known and therefore probably underutilized. I have been using it to receive updates from some business pages for almost a year now. There now seems to be a concerted effort at promoting these features. I have seen a lot more articles recently including an article in AT & T magazine called Facebook to Go: The Revolution goes Mobile published in its recent Spring 2009 mailer
I’ve stopped reading anything from Leena. She has consistently written shit.
This is the first I’ve ever read TechCrunch, so I guess that’s a lesson learned fairly quickly.
Add Erick to that list as well.
To me, this is a very interesting development. As we all know in business, competition is the main impetus in which innovation is conceptualize and implemented to better the consumer experience. So, as time progresses, I feel both parties will continue to launch new mobile features; which will make your experience on their platform even better.
follow me at twitter.com/alexanderbrown
I’m not sure your characterization of this as “getting serious about SMS” in response to “Twitter Envy” is entirely balanced.
At least, that’s not how it was framed when your blog previously covered this functionality, over 2 years ago.
http://www.tech...ok-goes-mobile/
That was actually a good 7 months after the initial launch of Facebook’s SMS offering, which was made in March 2006.
So, one might be tempted argue that Facebook has been “serious about SMS” for a little over three years…
Pwned.
What made TechCrunch different back then is that they didn’t comb other blogs for 4 day old stories about minute UI changes hyped up into a new feature aimed at starting geek drama.
fb has bought sms..tats gud…
http://www.ipho...ogs/mobile.html
This is pathetic.
mcslee: march 2006 was the official launch, but mark z himself added the mentioned search features through an sms to email bridge summer 04.
in print, this would be a full retraction. just sayin’
None of these features are new they are just being presented better – they have literally been around for years. Fact is, nobody uses them and Facebook wants that to change.
The update is not accurate either. That page was launched a few years ago. Please stop just making up things.
Is it just me or do all of these codes seem archaic and cumbersome? I’m working with a mobile client, SmartTouch, and they package up all of these random codes in a nice little graphical interface that works like an app. Seems like a much more consumer-friendly approach.