

Facebook’s Response To Twitter - thepanister
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/facebooks-response-to-twitter/

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bravura
I still don't get Twitter. I'm sorry, I've tried. I know that it's considered
hopelessly square to be behind the twitter trend, but I just don't appreciate
it. Maybe it's my phone device? Do most people use twitter desktop software?
What do you do about people who constantly tweet, half the time garbage and
half the time gems? It's just a constant barrage.

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tonystubblebine
A lot of people say things like this about social software and seemed bothered
that they don't understand how they would use it. But it's probably ok if they
never do, or at least wait until the use seems obvious.

You almost never hear people talk this way about non-social software. Two
years ago, I knew about Quickbooks, didn't use it, and was unconcerned. Now I
run a small business, my accountant prefers our books in this program, and I'm
happy to use it.

I think the reason this comes up with social software is because we don't have
a good vocabulary for talking about our social needs. When Twitter was just
getting started, a lot more people would say that they didn't get it and that
it had no value, even though empirically some people were clearly getting
value.

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bravura
I'm sorry, but usually it's the opposite for me. I especially appreciate
social technologies before they jumped the shark.

Email? It was awesome before everyone and their mother used it. Friendster? It
was like the wild wild west, free and easy, until everyone and their mother
got on it (and then facebook).

Twitter right now is okay. I forget who mentioned, but they said that everyone
would be on twitter in five years. That just sounds horrendous. Twitter is
already too diluted with "I have to go to the bathroom." "Nothing is coming."
"Okay, things are coming nicely." "I just went to the bathroom." There is
going to be one hunded times as much shit on Twitter come five years. Pun
intended.

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tonystubblebine
So when someone presents you with a new social technology, how do you decide
whether it's a fit for you? What words do you use?

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tonystubblebine
Would it be outrageous to say that Facebook and Twitter are different things
and can live in parallel? One of Facebook's strengths is that it maintains
private data. Part of what makes Twitter unique is that so much of the data is
public. They're both useful, but for different cases.

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bjclark
Totally agree. I don't think this is Facebook trying to kill Twitter. I think
it's more Facebook learning why people like Twitter and applying it to their
domain of data. Facebook isn't turning into a microblogging platform.

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swombat
That's very, very interesting.

Facebook is certainly proving to be a dynamic competitor. This could well
"bring Twitter to the masses" in a way that Twitter has so far struggled to
do.

That said, Twitter itself is on the cusp of achieving this.

And then again, Twitter's quiet unfollow is an important feature of keeping
Twitter usable. If someone is overly noisy on Twitter, I can unfollow them. If
they do the same on Facebook, what then? Unfriend them? Unlikely.

Say goodbye to Twitter spam, say hello to Facebook status spam.

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JimEngland
Right now, the main problem with Facebook's message feature is that it is only
available to friends as you addressed. You won't want to unfriend somebody
because they post too much; if you unfriend, you also lose access to their
photos, contact information, and it is also publicaly seen.

Along with the new homepage layout, the most important feature Facebook is
adding is the one way follow for celebrity figures. This is very important; it
will allow regular users to see the benefits of an individual sharing things
about their lives. I believe that Facebook is using these celebrity accounts
to sell users on opening up and sharing more information.

I expect one way follows to become open to all Facebook users in the future.
Your Facebook account will have two sides: the public information sharing
(Twitteresque chatter, links to articles, etc) and the entire profile.

They have to tread carefully, however. Facebook's root is in allowing only
those within your network or friend circle to view your information. It will
take a dramatic shift in the user's view of their information. If they can
succeed, however, I think that Twitter will not be sustainable in the long
run.

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aaronblohowiak
Just choose "show less" from the nice menu next to each item on hover

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alabut
The new Facebook homepage layout is similar to a change Twitter made last year
as well - moving the filters from horizontal tabs above the feed to a vertical
one running next to it. It's a bit more obvious when you look at the current
and upcoming layouts side-by-side:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/newprof...](http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/03/newprofile.png)

Twitter made an identical change in September of last year, described in their
blog post here:

<http://blog.twitter.com/2008/09/changes-afoot.html>

The interesting thing is that the rationale is exactly the same for both
companies, yet Facebook users already have the ability to form adhoc groups
and filters of their contacts, whereas Twitter doesn't. It's probably a big
part of the reason why my Facebook friend list feels pretty manageable at
close to 300 people, yet following a similar number of people on Twitter
drives me a bit nuts and my Twitter feed increasingly feels like a crazy RSS
reader with only big giant folder and no sorting abilities. I've been trying
to deal with the info firehouse overload by going old school with browser
bookmarks and grouping twitter pages by "friends", "designers", "San
Francisco", etc.

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aditya
Have you tried TweetDeck? The 'group' by searching feature is pretty good.

Also, the other suggested solution is to consider using different twitter
accounts for different groups of people...

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alabut
That's a great tip, I've probably gone as far as I can go organization-wise
with the browser and w/o using a dedicated twitter client.

The problem with tweetdeck and twhirl and whatever else is that it turns
twitter into IM, something constantly on that I have to check and that pops up
alerts. I guess you could turn that stuff off, so that's what I'll experiment
with.

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paulsilver
I've recently gone back to Tweetdeck having tried it when it was first in
beta. It's not perfect, but the groups feature is great and I find I'm able to
handle following a lot more people because of it.

I've turned off all alerts from Tweetdeck so it doesn't bother me when I'm
focussing on work, and use 'clear' in each group when I've finished reading
through it. Sometimes that means reading all the updates, others it's just a
way of removing the old stuff I'm not going to bother with.

I only have two groups which basically split in to people I know well and want
to read, and people who I don't know as well or are very noisy. The latter
gets cleared a lot more without reading all the messages but lets me keep
track of more local conversations and the interesting nuggets that come up
occasionally.

The guy who makes Tweetdeck recently got some funding so he can work on it
full time and hire in some extra talent, so it's likely to improve more
rapidly than it has been.

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lunaru
Anytime I tell someone about twitter and they say "oh, it's like a web site
that just does Facebook status? lol why would I use that?" I feel like
Facebook just gained more ground.

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paul7986
Did they announce Facebook status search like Twitter search?

I need this for marketing and social real time search is going to either be
extremely complimentary to Google or possibly Google's biggest competitor!

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whughes
I believe that talking about "social real time search" as Google's biggest
competitor is vastly overstating things. Twitter simply cannot produce most of
the content that Google can provide. Short opinions, yes. Lengthy product
reviews, no. If you're trying to figure out how to solve X problem (say, in an
OS installation or in your code, for a technical standpoint), Twitter may well
be useless. It's difficult to fit specific, real information into 140
characters.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Twitter search isn't good for reference searches. But it's great for real time
opinion and real time opinion can be extremely valuable.

As an example for anyone running a business, that real time opinion is a great
way to get and respond to feedback from your customers.

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diego
Here is a good example:

<http://twist.flaptor.com/trends?gram=skittles>

We would love to be able to add other status feeds to this tool but so far we
haven't found any with a volume that's a significant fraction of Twitter's. A
live feed from Facebook would be ideal.

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paul7986
Well pondered if it would be complimentary or a killer.

Though when I use Twitter to search on a real time topic there are more then
just thoughts, as Twitters are also sharing and pointing to resources (links)
to more info about said topic. What could be done here is incorporate bit.ly
into twitter search and have it calculate the most shared (Retweeted) link on
said topic and list them somewhere in the interface. Like US Air into
Hudson... what is the most shared/relevant (RT) link at that moment.

It possibly could be a competitor or possibly just very complimentary to
Google.

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foulmouthboy
The thing that worries me about this is the fact that I was already
uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook might be making my private
information public. For them to be integrating Twitter-like features doesn't
exactly make me feel better. Twitters main draw seems to be in communicating
with huge numbers of strangers while Facebook lets me talk to lots of friends
at once.

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johns
Nothing is changing with privacy. Your updates are still only available to
your friends (or whatever you set). The one-way follow is being added for real
people to follow companies/public figures.

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eob
I think Facebook has already lost too Twitter on this front. When people think
Facebook, they think private info and friend's pictures. When people think
Twitter, they think public broadcast mechanism.

The identities of the two systems have already been framed -- once that
happens it is hard to change the momentum just by competing with features.

