
Why Facebook Can't Become Twitter: Its Closed Nature  - peter123
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090504/0206304731.shtml
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ryanwaggoner
This post seems to assume that Facebook wants to be more like Twitter, without
bothering to support that. Let's take a look:

\- Facebook likely has 20-30x the number of users that Twitter does, despite
only being a couple years older.

\- Facebook brings in hundreds of millions in revenue; Twitter brings in zero.

\- Facebook is composed of real people, many of which have rich and deep
connections in real life. A comparatively large percentage of the users on
Twitter are corporations, marketers, and spammers.

\- Facebook has tens of thousands of applications on its platform; Twitter has
hundreds.

\- Facebook has raised hundreds of millions on valuations in the billions;
Twitter has raised tens of millions on valuations in the hundreds of millions.

\- Facebook has twice the retention rate that Twitter does.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of both services, but this post is a clear
example of being blinded by the latest hype (and yes, I'm aware that Facebook
is high on hype as well).

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patcito
MySpace had 20-30x the number of users that Facebook did not so long ago.

~~~
aneesh
Looks like you'd have to go back to 2006, but yes, that was the case not too
long ago.

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=myspace.com,facebook.com&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=myspace.com,facebook.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Dumb question, but doesn't Google Trends cover searches, not traffic on the
actual domain? Are we just assuming that the ratio of searches:traffic is
pretty much the same for both sites?

~~~
aneesh
Yes, you're absolutely right. I made that assumption, and justified it by
seeing that Compete's numbers matched up well for the past 12 months (Compete
unfortunately only goes back 1 year, hence I went to Google Trends).

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mcargian
Next up on HN:

Why an Orange Can't Become an Apple: Its tough orange skin

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jonknee
Next week's article:

How Facebook Can Become Twitter: Open up

I mean come on, it would be a weekend project to allow public posts and
"follow" instead of just "add as friend".

The real interesting part is if Facebook/Twitter can actually make money.

~~~
jgilliam
Become a "fan" of a Facebook page = "follow"

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Tiktaalik
Really? In the course of about a month and a half Facebook has caught up on
nearly every single feature that makes Twitter distinct and interesting. I
haven't seen a compelling reason to think that they won't be able to finish
the job and go even further than what Twitter is capable of in the future.

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sjs382
Great, so Twitter is different from Facebook because Facebook is "closed".

I don't see an argument re: which is more desirable (to the common user)
though, an open system or a closed one. Without that argument, this article is
mostly useless and uninteresting.

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bradgessler
Facebook - self-updating Rolodex

Twitter - real-time news

