If you were to distill Facebook down to its core magic, you’d have Twitter’s real time news stream with a really expensive-to-maintain photo site bolted on.
And while Twitter isn’t exactly posing much of a current threat, Facebook isn’t taking any chances. Just as Friendster and MySpace tried to buy Facebook in the early days (and nearly did), Facebook is now trying to take Twitter out. First was the acquisition attempt. Then came a focus on real time content streams. Today we saw phase 3 – a search engine for public status updates and other content that a small percentage of users are able to test.
Next week, we hear, phase 4 of Facebook’s systematic attack on Twitter is scheduled for beta testing: the Everyone Button.
Facebook currently has complicated privacy settings to let users control who sees what content they post. There are 27 different settings for most Facebook content, plus another 17 for applications. Most users don’t bother.
If Facebook is going to leapfrog Twitter and become the place for the real time news stream, they need more than a new user interface and a search engine (they must be livid to see things like this – Twitter will forever be associated with the civil unrest in Iran, just the most recent example). They need public content as well. And that means encouraging users to post at least some of their content publicly.
The current privacy settings don’t allow for specific status updates and other messages to be treated differently than other messages. That’s going to change. Users will be presented with a variety of privacy choices every time a message is posted to Facebook – everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends and friends. They’ll also be allowed to customize the settings further.
But the top choice, and the one most people will choose, is “Everyone.” That means you can have an entirely private profile but occasionally choose (or, Facebook hopes, always choose) to have status messages, links, photos, events, etc. be public and findable in that shiny new search engine.
It’s not clear that Facebook will be able to quickly convince its users to make content public. Just a couple of years ago there were revolts over the launch of the news stream itself, and it wasn’t all that long ago that college students were super not happy about all the old people being let in. But none of that matters. Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and we just live in it. He’ll bend us all to his will.
Watch your back, Twitter. I hear Phase 5 is a doozy.
Good post Mike
thanks! mostly for not trolling.
If you distilled Twitter down to its core magic, you’d have a url bookmarking/shortening service with a comment box bolted on.
That sounds pretty much like de.licio.us
There might be a little more to Twitter than that.
Less, actually. Delicious has tags and the option to keep certain tweets, err, links private.
Why is competition called ‘Attack’? Facebook has a much larger userbase, much more stable platform, is feature rich, so , naturally it will take twitter out. If only they ‘d allow users to use their company pages instead of their personal accounts to login/Connect
The bigger risk is that FB concentrates too hard to beating Twitter that its loses sight of its own business plan and at same time Twitter grows market share. I think the market is segmented enough that both could survive in the long run if they can monetize their models.
Will the KGB effect facebook’s news/riot feeds? What if Georgia decided to revolt and facebook cut off access from russian users. I don’t want any private or foreign entity seeing my personal data. Even if the feds bought facebook, I wouldn’t trust them.
Do you really think that public button will come? You got it in beta fb? Hints true because some lock icon was there next to a status update in the last screenshot.
Not ‘public’ but ‘panic’. Although they are probably one in the same as far as FB is concerned.
Why are all these companies trying to be everything for everyone?
Tell you what… Facebook is going to Feature Creep themselves into bankrupcy if they keep trying to compete with every company out there.
I’m just curious as to why facebook suddenly feels it NEEDS to compete with Twitter. To me, they’re two seperate services.
It would make more sense for facebook to compete with Linked-in rather than Twitter.
Great point. Being everything to everyone grows user numbers and founder egos but undermines value as a marketing vehicle. The telephone has a huge user base, but it only makes money because people pay to use the service. Facebook would have a more viable business if they stuck with catering to their original Ivy League user base.
IMO facebook is trying to integrate all the web 3.0 elements into 1 service. But this won’t last if webapps like twitter would start to interact, and have almost native integration with other webapps. In the end web 3.0 will overlap everything, so it can try but eventually even facebook will have to adapt, and be part of a larger whole.
Good post…apart from the end.
“Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and we just live in it. He’ll bend us all to his will.”
What??? Get out of here. There is just a point where people would leave.
Def Good post Mike
Is facebook really going tto buy Dream Cheeky’s panic button?
you should look at Dream Cheeky new stress ball it has 5 buttons!!!.. maybe thats for the next phase?
You forgot vanity URLs- they are necessary to expose twitter-like feeds. Notice how journalists got special URLs.
well, some journalists.
It’s a tangent, but it occurred to me that the total funding of Google was about 25m. http://en.wikip...public_offering
Facebook’s funding is 714m. What are your thoughts on why these two numbers are off by an order of magnitude? Is this a predictor of something for FB?
funding != business plan + implementation
No, but you reach the point where it’s stupid to throw more dollars down a hole that’s already sucked down 714 million. I’m sure there are a few suckers out there who don’t realize that FB has already peaked in mindshare and is now retreating.
The reason for the high worth of FB is the value of its data to governments and security services
You’re not a journalist.
ya True, but not everyone is using that in a better way like we use Twitter
I use FB only with keep up with and in touch with friends;
I use Twitter more for networking, meeting people of same interests, scoops (news), info, etc…
You are right, Mark can do whatever he wants, and I will use it the way I want
Same here Maui. I find myself using Twitter a lot more and just dropping in on FB to catch up with old high school and college buddies.
I actualy like the fact that I can share suff with my friends and business partners without anyone else accessing it.
But I think this will be very important step for Facebook. And if they let me choose what I want to share with “outsiders” that’s just fine with me.
Facebook have failed before they even start.
There is NOTHING they could do that would get me back using that sack of trash failure of a social network.
“fail” may be a bit strong.
you’re just a hater…whats to really complain about? slow loading times for your friend’s photo albums?
um, well, yes that would be a valid complaint. not a complaint that I have, but still…
I disagree. From my perspective Facebook becomes more valuable every day as I find and connect to more of my real-world friends and relative in a way I haven’t before.
I believe you get out of it what you put into it.
True. I was skeptical at first of Facebook, but it’s become a valued way for me to keep in touch with friends old and new and quickly reaching the point where I would pay a small amount per month to keep it going (maybe $5-10 a month).
The challenge for facebook is how to introduce that $5-10 without scaring away the network that I find valuable so that I’m then only willing to pay $1 or less.
true, although FB needs to compete with Twitter on public content, he’ll need to compete with Google-Wave in the future for private content.
another thing is that you forgot to mention the Vanity-URL mania, so I’m waiting FB to open public profiles in the future.
Doozy all right. FaceBook annoys people like me who’ve been around, don’t like the TOS, and prefer things like Twitter, Flickr or FriendFeed.
Problem is I’d leave FB if not everyone I knew was on there. There are old friends of mine I only have connections to on FB, otherwise I’d be off.
On the other hand, few of my FB friends are on Twitter and aren’t really interested either (they don’t know or ‘get’ what they are missing), but if they did get the taste of the Twitter experience via FB, I bet they will get hooked.
Also, FB tends to have a younger crowd still, like my kids, and they couldn’t care less about Twitter, but as they get to college age, the worldly appeal of an open twitter connection woudl appeal more than posting party pics for your friends.
I don’t like the forecast much, and I hope I’m wrong with my concerns, but indeed, the Zuck is a smart man.
If I could access facebook events only, I wouldn’t use the site. The sad truth is that if I leave, I’d end up not knowing about parties, get-togethers, concerts, etc.
Damn you, Facebook
i’ve been on facebook for several years now. in the beginning it was just to keep tabs on my college-age cousins. then other friends started to join and i admit that i stuck around because suddenly i was “seeing” people i hadn’t seen in ages.
but it’s such a struggle to have a conversation on facebook that i’ve finally given up on it all together. it’s simply not worth the tremendous amount of effort to slog through the feed just to get the few interesting nuggets of conversation from friends. there are other social networking sites out there were the feed actually works well, really well, and there’s so much other functionality that’s easier to use and access compared to FB’s offerings that i’ve just decided to stop strugging with FB and use the other sites instead.
my two sites of choice – multiply.com and twitter. (via nambu. nambu is what makes all the difference with twitter.)
I wonder what percentage of users will actually post to everyone. I think that users interested into publicly posting their statuses already use twitter for that. It might be too late for Facebook to roll this out.
I agree
It’ll be huge. Frankly with the last update I stopped using Twitter. I, like everyone who doesn’t read TechCruch, which let’s face it is 99.9999999% of the world, doesn’t have time to keep up with all this stuff so some sacrifices have to be made. Mine was Twitter because I care more about my friends than missing 100 tweets an hour. I’ve been waiting patiently for a public posting option on Facebook and then my blog and Twitter are history. As soon as Facebook does a revenue share with me, I say, game over.
You are probably correct.
BTW, at its core, FB is 200mm plus users, not simple technologies put together. Just like craigslist isn’t a crap web site at its core, it core is a network of users.
Good point. I wonder how many minutes have shifted to twitter, only to move back to fb later. We all have limited minutes and tolerance for these sites. I do “refresh” my fb stream more often than checking twitter. I wonder if the folks at fb see an opportunity to pull more minutes from twitter with this new feature. I didn’t know friendster tried to buy fb. Does anyone know the details?
Sounds interesting.
But…I use Twitter and Facebook for very different things.
Twitter – for real-time news and trend discovery and sharing related to technology, my work, and other special interests where I’m interested in engaging publicly with a broad audience. Many of the people I follow I’ve never met, and never will.
Facebook – for connecting and staying in touch with friends and family, sharing personal aspects of my life, mood, plus cool things I find on the Web. I am friends with a much smaller group of people, almost all of whom I know reasonably well.
As Facebook adds features to be more and more like Twitter (and use it similarly), I find myself using Facebook less and less. I would much rather Facebook focus on ways to enrich my relationships with my friends than obsessing over Twitter.
Here’s the disconnect I see. Won’t other people have to opt in to your “everyone” updates? Or is it intended to be found only through search? Or when people occasionally visit the everyone stream? I imagine when they see how noisy real-time is they’ll retreat back to the safety of their profile.
Secondly, If you post something to everyone, and I decide I want to see more from you, will I have to ‘friend’ you? In which case all you end up with is a much more expensive to run Twitter, with expanded profiles and a bazillion pictures.
I just don’t see the need for these systems to live as one, I like them separate just fine.
lost the momentum, and the sharing culture on Twitter doesn’t apply on Facebook.
FB = Mainstream Twitter / Friend Feed.
for the most part yes… but asymmetric follow is a key differentiation that remains to be seen if Facebook can/will/choose to emulate.
Both companies offer something unique IMO:
1) Twitter is for updating the masses, or public, of what you’re doing… and receiving such updates.
2) Facebook is for people you trust, or have communicated with at least a few times.
Facebook could pull it off if they gave you implicit privacy settings for what you want to publicly share. Perhaps each piece of information you add — status, photo, video, etc — could have a “public” option.
Re: #2
Clearly they’re moving away from that.
I think that giving users per-item privacy settings will overwhelm them a little, and most won’t use it much. They’ll just set a a global pref and stick with it; or maybe not even change the default global pref. How much you want to bet that the default global pref will be unnecessarily broad? (Not “Everyone”, probably, because of the potential backlash, I think.)
Though I’m not against per-item settings; my profile will remain as locked down as ever…
“Facebook is for people you trust”
While I may reluctantly be on the service, I don’t use it nor do I place loads of personal content on the site. I’ve got one photo and a junk email. Thing is, I trust my friends, but I don’t trust Facebook.
Adam, good point about trusting your network, but not Facebook.
YES!
If facebook launched today with all this functionality it would be received with great praise. The problem it faces is that this constant evolution sparks comment and disdain within, I would suggest, the less tech savy community.
I like this idea personally
This can only be good, unless you happen to work at Twitter. I tend to avoid posting on Facebook because it seems like a hole where data goes to die. I much prefer sites where there is a public record of your content available for linking and search engines.
FB is in a dilemma… to be [Public] or not be [Public] ! its not a cake walk for them to compete with twitter, primarily coz twitter is 99% Open (and that is its USP). People love FB coz it is a place wer they can share things with ther FRIENDS not with every passer by (Followers), so i guesses it is loved because of its privacy.
And yet Facebook has persistently tried to get people to be less private…
exactly
as long as we perceive a certain level of privacy, that is all that matters, right
You can’t really put the twitter ‘news’ chain up against facebook’s news feed.. it’s apple and oranges… Twitter has the fast spreading, up-to-minute breaking news, and FB has facebook connect (which has spread faster than the new user rate on twitter did earlier this year).
The winner will be whoever aggregates the best of both services into a single app or service, they’re both too different to be considered head-to-head fighters i feel.
All sounds too complicated to me. The beauty of Twitter is the simplicity. Finding your way round FB is worse than Hampton Court Maze in a dense fog!
or perhaps worse than trying to figure out off the top of your head what a ‘Hampton Court Maze in a dense fog’ is…
thanks for the childhood flashback!
Despite being huge and dull traditional social network, Facebook goes on and on to modernize itself and adopt to rapid-changing environment. Kudos for them! Though I highly doubt Facebook will manage to keep itself relevant for a long time.
I wish Facebook have a category to gather and categorize the pics and statuses i “like”, and i “comment”, which my profile can show myself better.
Just like twitter and flickr, you can find someone’s “favorite” to see what he/she likes and kinda know him/her better.
They simple don’t get it. People will never use FB on such way they use Twitter. Facebook is going trough identity chrisis and in that case is the worst thing to imitate somebody else. Go invent something Facebook.
“People will never use FB on such way they use Twitter.”
Can you back that up ? I see people doing it all the time. Having to broadcast their twitter updates on both Twitter and Facebook because some people don’t care for one of either services. And if you ask me who’s got the best momentum and the biggest installed base… you know what I’ll have to reply. Sooo…
Twitter and FB are heading in slightly different directions. Twitter is going towards fast sharing, real time search and gathering first hand raw information which will be than organized by various other services into other products like trends, search, reviews…
Facebook will be like your online ID where you store your information which are generally more static. FB is becoming for many people ultimate addressbook (but FB should break more chains here).
Ofcourse, they do overlap in some things but I believe FB should accept this direction and not try to be something they are not.
Twitter and FB are fullfiling each other and I don’t see reason for fear of losing.
It’s like coke is scared of Big Mac. They are both fast food and together they create (unhealthy) meal.
that last line is epic. that should be the title of the next TC post.
If i want to broadcast random stuff for the world to see, i use twitter. If i want to just be in touch with my friends and actually share pics, play games, share vids, and just generally do a bunch of stuff, i use Facebook. If i want to archive and share pics, i use Flickr. If i want to do professional networking, I use LinkedIn.
Just because anyone doesn’t have a use or a need or even a desire for either of these services (that address very different needs or desires), doesn’t mean it’s a “failure” or a “piece of trash”. I personally think Twitter is simply “the telegraph for the 21st century”, and is excellent for sharing news in absolute real time. But that remains a niche, considering how I can reach everyone I care to reach with LinkedIn and Facebook, and with much richer content, at that. But then again, that’s me. Your mileage may vary, depending on your agendas, but don’t be a hater, geez.
Most of users on Facebook are using it to contact with their personal friends but on Twitter most of them use for getting Updates and sharing their favorite stuff/links with others
But as Facenook has rolled out these features, people will surely try to post useful links/lists on Facebook and it will become professional’s site like Twitter soon
btw it has more features that Twitter and Good post Mice, it was an intersting story
Do you really want two twitters in the internet space?
Facebook is going away from its core, and i’m not too sure if people will like that.
I am not understanding why facebook is trying to take twitter out and catchup with real time search when it is already at top.
I think the idea is extremely simple: make Facebook versatile enough so that you can do anything you want with it: broadcast news, social networking, picture sharing, etc. therefore basically rendering the others redundant, which really only makes business sense, considering the momentum they have, and the moneytizing they have to figure out. They’ve been doing a pretty good job at that on the technological front so far, and frankly, I’d rather have a one-stop shop for all my communications than to have to fragment it on multiple sites.
FBs “feed” is already clogged with outlandish quizzes and annoying “applications”. Imagine adding the equivalant to twitters “public timeline” http://twitter....public_timeline –unworkable!
Otherwise I don’t see how these updates appear to others without some sort of “follow only” ability. I suspect those who are inclined to use FB that way are already tweeting.
as an app developer i totally agree that fb could render twitter redundant when they do this. i might even consider dropping twitter in apps I build under the assumption that FB will already have twitter’s data due to people having fb-twitter plugins.
Also, since they’re multimedia I’d assume they’d be able to give you actual asset urls in their feeds rather than having to follow and scrape tinyurls
Twitter is not dead yet. Why don’t they make multimedia tweets like mirTwitter?
With multimedia tweets they could stop FaceBook and get a business model.
“multimedia tweets” = Google Wave, basically…
The moment my friends leave FB is the moment I close my account. I don’t want any of my FB information public. It’s too personal. Twitter — who cares, it just has my name and location attached.
There is no such thing as privacy… privacy is only one line of code away… so don’t count on it
There are varying shades of privacy.
Your information lives in FB DBs forever, whether you close your account or not.
The thing that makes me like Twitter is that it is not a social tool confined to one genre. It is much more than going out, making friends and poking them. It is an open system that has given birth to so many new applications and services.
A lot of real-life and tangible services now depend upon twitter. Twitter is more generalized and can be adapted to virtually any medium. Facebook is still nothing but a more sophisticated version of Myspace. No matter what Facebook tries to do, Twitter will still retain that edge. Facebook users are not used to the constant, real-time streams and flood of information. There was a backlash when the new activity stream was launched. I had to disable the Twitter application from within Facebook because my friends were irritated of my constant updates.
FB has got problems – I am 100% sure this wasn’t in FB’s grand vision. In fact they have none anymore.
They are just chasing at “whatever is hot” trying to play catchup to Twitter. However, Twitter are the innovators – they will just keep putting out new features and running FB into the ground.
Facebook needs to decide what they are. Figure out a 5 year plan which is outrageously innovative and then make it happen.
What are these new Twitter features of which you speak?
lol
Yet FB still spends millions chasing them.
I may be an outlier, but I find that as Facebook moves closer to Twitter, I prefer just using Twitter. In fact, by using a client that integrates one of the picture services, I find Twitter to be more compelling.
The subtleties of allowing non-mutual relationships make a big difference in my opinion. Moreover, Twitter started as a feed of interesting, mostly tech/web-related content, which I find far more interesting than the fact that an old high-school acquaintance has a headache (Facebook). It will be interesting to see how the two sites change over time.
Its all very funny to me. The PR machines of the big co’s continue to churn out rubbish, and the big co’s continue on their paths of creating a better silo to lock users content in, so that they can use it to generate revenue and large valuations that will enable them to receive large amounts of investment, float, or be acquired.
Where are the end users in this equation ?
At what point does the value flow back to the content creators and members of these big company silos ?
I m a musician as well as a technologist. I created an open source application (This was done so that users have some ownership of the application; so much ownership that they can take the app and use it on their own purposes)
that has all of the ability that Face Book is creating in all of their “phases”.
We even have the vaunt and yet to be released social e-commerce system that Face book is one day going to launch. We have this now, today, and it is open source. So if you want to sell items and have access to a micro payment system; we have it today.
Musician and artist that are using Myspace and are unable to sell your music to your fans; we also have Artist pages that allow you to sell your music and we also give your fans the ability to resell your music on their profile pages.
Developers that seem to always be on the loseing end with Facebook, Twitter and the rest; we have an app store where you can sell your applications, and since we are open source you can actully help us become a better applcation, or you can take the code and extend it to be what you want it to be.
On facebook, instead of ‘following’ someone, the button will be called ‘Stalk’.
Have to be honest, Facebook is totally missing the mark here. Twitter is NOT Facebook, nor is it a competitor as a social network (Twitter is a publishing tool, not so much a social network).
To try to be something you’re not just to stay buzzworthy? I’m all for reinvention, but I can’t see this ending well for Facebook.
I don’t see how facebook statuses are compared to twitter’s, none of friends post any news, it’s all personal stuff, why would I want to search through stuff like that. I don’t think facebook, or anybody, can beat a textbox with a limit of 140 characters.
Say goodnight Twitter, it will be a slow fall from the top of the real time hill. The biggest problem for Twitter is that the 200+ million FB users who never joined/actually tried to use Twitter are now going to begin doing Twitter like actions on FB and not really know it. What could make FB real time feed better is that they don’t need many 3rd party apps for the feed to improve & make more useful (img, link display, commenting/liking etc).
phase #5 will cost around $2B
I think too ..Facebook have failed before they even start.
“There are 27 different settings for most Facebook content, plus another 17 for applications. Most users don’t bother.”
Maybe that’s true, but all the users that I know DO restrict access, at least to some extent.
“Users will be presented with a variety of privacy choices every time a message is posted to Facebook”
That’s exactly what we need, more questions, clicks, and options.
“But the top choice, and the one most people will choose, is “Everyone.” ”
I disagree. Not sure FB users will make the leap and start using FB like twitter is used. And, again, I think most people put at least some restrictions on their content.
I think it should be possible to have it both way… publicise stuff that needs to reach a wide audience, but retain control over the amount of information you give out about yourself.
goodbye twitter……
My complaint about this whole twitter thing is that it took a small feature that is in FB and people are raving about it like it’s something revolutionary. It’s not like twitter has it’s own userbase…the people using twitter already use fb and other social media sites.
You’ve got it all backwards.
There is a whole ecosystem building up around Twitter like the #140conf and microsyntax.org that is more interesting to me (and probably a lot of other people) than the Texas Hold’em / Mafia Wars ecosystem. Twitter is perceived by the masses as easier to set-up and get using than Facebook. Main Street seems to feel far more comfortable with Twitter as a business tool. Nifty features can’t compete with that perception IMHO.
microsyntax.org is not so much part of an “ecosystem” as it’s a way to work around the 140 character limit on twitter (that facebook does not have, so there is no need for such nonsense). I can guarantee you that no non-nerds would find microsyntax remotely interesting or have a desire to learn it. Hmm, should I play poker online or go learn microsyntax, an unnecessary abbreviation system.
Actually,
facebook is about sharing stuff with friends
twitter is about shouting into the void so your followers and future followers can hear
twitter is more about news than facebook
Great post!
“Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and we just live in it.”
So true, wonder how much that has to do with the appeal of the twitterverse
I think you are dead wrong about Facebook not being hurt by Twitter. I can/will only use one service. I have now churned from hourly Facebook use to daily use. My Twitter usage has taken up the slack. I suspect that many people are acting like me.
Multiply that by the rest of America, and that leaves you with two words for Facebook.
Uh-oh!
Will facebook become the new home of people talking about how they use facebook?This is happening a lot on twitter at the moment!
Facebook is not likely to ever replace Twitter. Facebook is too bulky to do so.
My car can make phone calls. Fully voice controlled even. But I don’t go to my car to make most calls because my iPhone is more convenient. Twitter is more convenient for me to quickly share updates or browse through others.
Twitter Application in Facebook.
277,698 monthly active users – 3 friends
Would be slightly interesting to know what number of your friends are using it. Mine is a massive 3.
Facebook with there proxy’ing of applications must have a fairly good idea of the flow of data to twitter from within already.
With this new public search and “everyone” button, it does increase the amount of data about us they will be able to sell on to 3rd parties without breaking their TOS.
Anyone else get the feeling that FB is just pissed they never bought out twitter, so now they feel like screwing them over and copying as many features as possible?