
How Facebook Could Kill Twitter Overnight - peter123
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/01/how-facebook-could-kill-twitter/
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jackowayed
This shows a complete lack of understanding of Twitter.

Twitter does status updates and does them amazingly well.

You (more-or-less) know that all of your followers read all of your statuses.

You can get Tweets from any device remotely connected to anything. SMS,
Firefox, desktop, iGoogle, web, etc. This would take a lot of time for
Facebook to catch up on.

And with Twitter there is no other noise. Statuses are the entire thing. That
focuses you on that. You don't get distracted by pictures, videos,
relationship status changes, etc. That focuses it, which is very appealing to
users.

No one would make Twitter-like apps centered around statuses because people
don't care that much about statuses on Facebook, and people wouldn't start
caring about statuses because there would be no Twitter-like apps to make
getting statuses easy and versatile.

It takes a lot to totally transform how people use a service like making
Facebook Twitter-centric would.

~~~
gaius
You can in your preferences tweak FB to prioritize status updates in your
newsfeed and de-prioritize everything else.

~~~
pietro
Or just click the status updates tab.

~~~
jackowayed
I know that both of these are true, but it's not the point.

People would need a lot to start using facebook like Twitter. They'd need to
be able to get all of the statuses via SMS, Firefox Extensions, etc, etc.

People overall don't use Facebook statuses like they do Twitter, and that
inertia will take a lot more than allowing people to make apps that would show
people their friends' statuses.

Inertia is a powerful force, and that larger userbase would somewhat be a
disadvantage in that regard. It's more people they have to get to switch over
to using statuses like they would Twitter. Getting that process started would
be almost impossible.

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iamdave
_Right now a call to Facebook’s Users.getInfo API call will return the user’s
[...]profile...if Facebook added status to this method, Twitter would be
destroyed._

No it wouldn't.

I'll say this as simply as I can for anyone who ever plans on saying how
Facebook will kill/destroy/et al Twitter: Don't. Facebook and Twitter cater to
complete different tastes of two almost entirely different audiences.

~~~
biznickman
I have to disagree with you completely (then again I wrote the article :) )
... Twitter is just a feature for the most part ... you could instantly port
Twitter to Facebook in a day or two with a little bit of programming

~~~
iamdave
Simply showing up and saying you can migrate data from one into the
foundations of another doesn't at all sustain any sort of argument that a
distributed Facebook Status model will "kill" Twitter. The modus operandi is
drastically different between the two sites. Twitter isn't a "feature", it's a
"service", a highly extensible and mobile service. The fact that it is focused
on such a simple protocol as telling people what you are doing, imo will
ensure its longevity.

Given that people look at Facebook statuses as a mere _extension_ of a user's
profile, versus a Twitter timeline _actually serving as_ your profile, simply
distributing your Facebook status on a web page isn't going to phase Twitter
one bit.

And I still stand by what I said earier: Facebook and Twitter users aren't the
same. Mark might update his status on Facebook "Mark is at the ball game" but
on Twitter, he'll probably say "Local sports team is up by 4! Go team!". The
inherent purpose and utilitarian value of the two sites are completely
different for one to arbitrarily overthrow the other, just because the one
(Facebook) mimics the distribution of the other (Twitter)

~~~
natrius
Statuses on Twitter and Facebook are just text fields, although Facebook's
starts with your name. The differences between how they are predominantly used
are results of socialization, and many people use Facebook statuses like
you've described Twitter's and vice versa.

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sh1mmer
This is total piffle.

The important difference between Facebook and Twitter is one is open and the
other isn't.

People already in Facebook's ecosystem use status like Twitter, and people
inside and out use Twitter to update their status.

------
nx
Yeah well, like I said in the blog comments:

 _Facebook: full-fledged social network. Twitter: simple, quick-posting
environment._

There IS a big difference between these two sites, Facebook won't kill
twitter, we can go to sleep calmly now :)

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vaksel
Why would it want to? Facebook and Twitter have completely different goals

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mrandre
I think one can safely assume that any article containing the phrase "could
kill x by changing only y" is worthless drivel. The author has hit correctly
on the fundamental difference between the service, but veers into crazy town
suggesting that changing one service kills another. I think humans have a
replacement bias, assuming that new thing x will replace old thing y, a bias
rarely borne by fact. Did planes replace trains? Where's my paperless office?
Tools have affordances. If facebook didn't work the way it does, it wouldn't
be facebook, and the same for twitter.

More importantly, why, exactly, does facebook want/need to kill twitter?

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varenc
I would also say this shows a lack of understanding on the Facebook API. Even
if status updates were accessible by the User.getInfo, facebook applications
would still only be able to access the status updates for the user running the
application and that users friends. No massive scraping/broadcasting like in
twitter.

~~~
biznickman
You are wrong ... you don't need session keys to access public data as I
stated in the article ... read the developer wiki in regards to what can be
displayed without a session key

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iamwil
With the fb API, and you can get statuses, just not the history of statuses
like in Twitter.

I doubt opening that up would kill twitter. There's a matter of cultural
momentum and social ecosystem that's already in place that's not going to be
abandoned in a blink.

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peter123
An interesting question to ask:

If facebook provides a blogging feature, would it kill wordpress.com or
blogger.com?

~~~
biznickman
Totally disagree, a blogging platform is not a feature ... status updates is

~~~
peter123
is there a difference between status updates and microblogging?

~~~
iamdave
Look at it like this: status updates on facebook => telling someone sitting
next to you you're getting married. microblogging => having a wedding shower.
It's all about the broad spectrum of recipients and how the data is
distributed, at least imo.

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chadmalik
Facebook users are used to basically only broadcasting updates to the people
they know. I think would take a long time and energy for FB to get them to
accept twitter-style openness and it would probably make a lot of FB users
look for a new platform. Also FB makes you tie your real name to your profile
whereas Twitter lets you use an assumed username which I think is necessary
for twitter style microblogging.

