Why Is Facebook Trying To Be Twitter?

I agree! There is no more privacy so messages sent to one person get sent to the whole network unless of course you send them a direct message which is of course like Twitter. The only thing is with Facebook you can write a whole book! Definitely good if you have a network of business colleagues but for your mates and close friends…na…not everyone wants to be reading everybody’s business, or do they? And I have read some pretty private stuff over the last few days…You’re right, they must be scared. But no need to be, they were leading the pack. Silly I say.

I have been using Facebook for over a year. I opened an account so I could connect with all my cousins in Colombia, then my friends.
I have only been active with Twitter for 2 months. So it doesn’t really bother me that they changed the look. But yes, I was going to post a comment on Facebook that it looks just like Twitter, but I refrained because most of my friends on FB are not on Twitter yet. I am guessing they will though now that so many people are talking about this. So in a way it is going to make more people curious about Twitter.

I completely agree… Facebook has been insistant on going against its original purpose: providing a way to keep in touch with friends.

If it could have slowed its rate of change after debuting the newsfeed, Facebook might have stayed at the height of its usefulness, but the it seems set on being like everyone else. The company seems not to understand that everyone joined Facebook in the first place because it was different from other social networking sites.

Jesse–I agree 100% & did the same thing you did–reserved FB for my friends & family and Twitter for networking & fun.

I HATE the new FB–it’s a total Twitter wannabe. I just tweeted about it yesterday.

Great post. Thanks!
Heather

Thank you for explaining why Facebook’s redesign is so poorly laid out. I, too, use Facebook for keeping in touch with friends, and Twitter for discussing professional or useful information, and the Facebook redesign is not keeping core audience’s needs in mind.

For all that’s worth, there is a vote going on within Facebook about the redesign here – note that virtually all of the comments are against the new design: http://tr.im/hud4

I didn’t notice a change really. I was forwarding twits to facebook long before their modications.

I guess I was ahead of the game. My page was unique, it stood out, and now it’s like everyone elses – for now.

Still, I can appreciate a good thing and most people can’t, thank God.

Since everytime, I’m just about to sign up for Facebook, they go and do something like this…well, I’m still not on Facebook yet. And, I was just getting won over to the point of appreciate what FB could do that Twitter can’t.

Facebook at one point and time tried to buy Twitter, so I’m not surprised about the new look. MySpace didn’t used to have the option of “People You May Know,” but they got that from Facebook. Websites tend to see what works on someone else’s site and add it to theirs.

not digging the new facebook format in the least – at this rate i will probably have to delete one or the other as its pretty much the same (small) group of people

I agree completely – I use Facebook for friends and family and past associates completely differently than I use Twitter – I don’t need constant updates in a live feed on Facebook – I don’t WANT constant updates on Facebook.

I can’t say I’ll leave them because there really is nowhere else to go, MySpace doesn’t work for adults so much – the privacy stuff bothers me – I purposefully do not allow my profile in public search engines and I do not want that to change. If they force that on me I just might have to say good-bye.

I completely agree. If I want to use Facebook to tweet then i will set it up that way. If not screw this I am finally going to agree with all the bitching people have been having over the years when Facebook changes something.

P.S. I have been on Facebook since it was about 5 months old.

I’m still mad about the change FB made about 6 months ago, so forget this one!

FB is like a full time job. I guess I will stay on it for my friends but I have never gotten into the gifts, the tags, the favorite soda pops, etc! Ugh! Where do people find the time for that stuff?

I’ve always loved Twitter for it’s microblogging concept and the new friends I have made.

Twitter is Twitter and Face Book is Face Book and never the twain should have met!

i totally agree with you. Facebook and twitter haven’t similar goals. Twitter is more for networking and professionnal goals and facebook is more personnal. That’s make the difference between them. But now, facebook is trying to do something to be more like twitter. Facebook changes its homepage, the notion of profil is also modified. Where do they want to go ? I don’t know but i disagree with their changements.

I refuse to retaliate, people are entitled to voice their own opinions, I’m just not a huge fan of “twitter” nor “facebook” for that matter. Having said that, I’m also entitled to support some of the “minorities” ideas/thoughts:

“I don’t understand this fuss. From what I understand, facebook and websites/social networks need to keep up with the web constant evolution or we, the users, will move. I don’t see myself being able to keep up with 3 or 4 profiles in diffrent networks. I started in myspace and don’t go there even once a month since I joined facebook, where I post everyday. I joined twitter a couple of months ago and still don’t go there so much as I go to facebook.
What I mean is: any of these places are free. You don’t like it, get out!”

“I didn’t notice a change really. I was forwarding twits to facebook long before their modications.

I guess I was ahead of the game. My page was unique, it stood out, and now it’s like everyone elses – for now.

Still, I can appreciate a good thing and most people can’t, thank God.”

“The spirit of facebook was always best represented as a lifestream, and occasional update platform, and not an instant microblog – as is with twitter.”

“Facebook is a social private network, and it never will be a twitter”

“Facebook is not Twitter. The end.”

I guess I’m in the relative minority of people who likes the Facebook layout. I think the “Twitter-esque” timeline oriented view makes much more sense to me. The previous layout seemed much more haphazard to me. The first 3 or 4 things were status updates, then everything else was this random mix of pictures, status updates, application notices, etc. which could be wildly out of order. I check Facebook a few times a day, so I really want to see what’s changed since I last checked it right there on the front page.

I’m also enjoying the increased emphasis on the status updates in Facebook. I think it’s cool to know what my real-life friends are up to, or what they find interesting.

I completely agree, it is retarded and facebook’s format is too different, so I don’t think it works very well using the twitter format.

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Thanks!!

A-FUCKING-MEN

You’re retards, Mark & Co.

I completely agree, I smell a certain paranoia to Facebook recently, too. Although it seems almost impossible that all their users would up and leave, we’ve seen it happen to so many other networking sites, and all at the hands of new things that were similar to the last, but very definitve in their image and function. Bebo died horribly, MySpace is a second class citizen, I think Facebook are just scared of being taken over by the new Twitter era, despite how unlikely that is. And – as saying goes – if you can’t beat them, join them.

I agree!! I love facebook for personal stuff but sometimes it is an annoying service to use. It has its place. I like posting albums so all my friends can view etc….I love twitter as it connects me with the whole world (well, kinda)…..

actually, in response to my own comment, myspace is actually doing alright, though I guess it found it’s niche in music marketing. By copying Twitter, Facebook are only undoing all their work of cementing a place in peoples RSS feeds. and annoying eeeeveryone in the process.

Totally Agree…Facebook needs to stop being Twitter-like!

The only changes I have seen are: the “what’s on your mind?” prompt, the newsfeed is separated into status updates and everything else is pushed off to the side with the ads (instead of tabbed), and it looks like you are writing on your own wall when you are actually creating a status update. My privacy settings are still the same. Just close the annoying twitter-like people’s updates if you don’t want to see that “their coffee spilled every where today” Same as before. Take a breather. Save the melodrama. Facebook is not real life unless you make it.

That being said, I liked the article. If facebook is trying to edge more towards twitter, that started when they introduced the status feature a while ago.

Wait, I’m confused. You’re upset because you made a broad assumption about the exact nature and purpose of a system that is as complex and ever-evolving as Facebook, and that assumption was quickly proven wrong?

If you want to use Facebook as a tool to communicate only with close friends and family, then by all means do so. They offer a ton of control over how your information is shared with the general community, so you can ultimately use it any way you wish.

I have to disagree. I like the convergence. If the new Facebook can replace both the old Facebook and Twitter with a unified service, I’m for that, and have no idea why others aren’t. I don’t like having to log into 3 different pages to see what is essentially the same information.

Love the new facebook. It’s all about statistics, hopefully for FB’s and my own sake, I’m in the majority.

This is precisely why I closed my Facebook account three days ago. No regrets looking back. My life has never been simpler.

I can’t tell you how much I agree with this. It is an obvious attempt at copying anything they can when it was already doing fine. Very, very annoying.

Yeah, they missed the boat on this one. I finally had it down and now it messes it up. Great post.

Pretty much everyone in my list has had the status ‘what the hell happened to facebook?’ last week.

My immediate thought that they also mimiced Twitter model to a great degree.

Oh, and the site is busted for me in Chrome, and wonky in Firefox.

They’ve gutted the site, ripping-out functionality. What was once unique, deep, & flexible, and good for keeping-up with friends, is evolving into a rigid and equally shallow Twitter clone.

The new single-choice News Feed inundates everyone with trivia they didn’t have to see before, while removing the Story Types sliders that let people manage that trivia.

At the same time they got rid of Live Feed, which provided ALL the depth that facebook offered for those who did want to receive lots of information. It’s now much harder to discover new local events, new friend connections, interesting new Groups, see when friends have changed their profile (because they gained/lost an interest/hobby/job/relationship), etc.

And now you get everything in the most screen-space-consuming format possibly imaginable. It doesn’t help you manage information when you can barely scan through it all, while being forced to see 25 posts, each one saying “John gave XYZ a pizza”.

For ways to get facebook to fix what they’ve messed-up, read the action steps in
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=61010781930

facebook tried to buy twitter a while ago; when the deal went sour, facebook decided to integrate the twitter-style micro-blogging onto their site. please do research before you complain.

Jesse,

I understand your complaints. I just wrote an article the other day about the troubles of managing many social tools online (flickr, wordpress, tumblr, facebook, twitter). As services change we really have no choice but to adapt, re-analyze and reconstruct in our heads how each machine we build using these services work.

I believe Facebook is looking at the big picture of IT. Twitter is blowing up. They believe it is due to the streaming nature of the content. Hence they made it more twitter like. It is still up to you to determine what permissions to give to different networks and who is your friend.

Great article. Subscribing to your feed.

The latest Facebook update is great.. it feels more like it did back when it wasn’t open to the general public. I’ve noticed very obviously that I’ve started to use it a lot more this last week or two.

I tried to get in to Twitter, I really did, but I find it absolutely pointless when Facebook was around first and does what Twitter “specialises” in far better.

Facebook sees the competition has a good thing going, and decides to try and “level” the playing field. It could be good business sense on their part.

You might want to check this article about new Facebook as well, just to give you some more info =)

http://www.nivas.hr/blog/2009/03/17/facebook-redesigned-failed-us-all-especially-web-designers/

Twitter is like facebook without all the spam & quizzes.

I hate the new layout for facebook. It gives too much information. I don’t care about what conversation people are having with other people, all I care about is their conversation with me. I wish they would change it back!

Honestly, people who say that Facebook is not trying to be like Twitter, or that Twitter is useless (or “the poor-man’s email”) DO NOT understand what Twitter can do. Twitter is the closest thing human beings have come to telepathy.

Twitter allows users to just post random 140-character updates. That’s how we think. We think in short bursts, not in long notes or photo album uploads or quizzes or Bumper Stickers. By following people’s thoughts, we can plug into twitter’s EXCELLENT (many magnitudes better than facebook’s) search.twitter.com feature, allowing us to search and essentially read any thoughts that anyone anywhere is having about a specific subject. Last time I checked, there is no way to search every status on facebook for everyone talking about a certain subject. So to say that twitter only does what facebook already did is just ridiculous.

Twitter allows us to follow someone’s thought-stream. The SXSW contest in Austin is a perfect example of this. By searching twitter for SXSW, we can essentially LIVE that experience through those who are there, sharing what they see and what they think about what’s going on. How can this happen via facebook? How would this happen in a “poor man’s email?” Simple answer: It can’t. It doesn’t.

@Terance way up there, it’s not hotdogs, though. It’s not two companies providing the same service and competing for the others customers. They could both easily reside in peoples broswer without stepping on toes. I agree that copying and outdoing is the only way for business to advance, but by Facebook copying twitter, they are completly undermining their uniqueness.

A better alanogy would be if a tacco stand saw a hotdog stand across the street and decided to pack in taccos and start selling hotdogs, despite how successful their tacco stand was doing. It’s just pointless, because there is demand for both. Instead, the tacco guy should improve on his tacco ingrediants, focusing on his own entraprise. Also, there would be no point the tacco guy selling hotdogs because you can’t make hotdogs in a tacco .. making … thing … I think the anaalogy went too far. Point is … taccos!

I definitely agree. This is why I canceled my account with facebook.

Beggars can’t be choosers. You will use what we give you.

My wife is beside herself because of these changes at Facebook. They have basically changed everything she loved about it. She has no interest in Twitter, and every day I get an update about how many people are crying out for Facebook to give their customers back what they lost.

I am especially bothered by the CEO’s apparent lack of caring for what his customers want. I have heard that he sent an email out to his employees, telling them to ignore customer complaints because “they’re not paying for it”. While that may be true, without any users, his real customers, the advertisers, won’t be paying anything either!

As a recent MBA graduate, I know that you can’t stay in business unless you are satisfying customers needs. This strategy of doing what the company wants, not the customers, is a recipe for disaster.

Wading through FB now is like walking in quicksand. I know where I want to go but all the stepping stones have been removed so I have to wade thru this STUPID quicksand

Facebook is just trying to be quick and easy like Twitter, but has confused some in the process.

Twitter is the new fad still for a while. Facebook will be around for much longer.

But recently Facebook Acquired FriendFeed which I think will make facebook more user friendly and slicker to use and cram less info down your throat trying to compete with twitter.

Facebook grew its membership twice that of Twitter in the month of July. Generally speaking, I use Facebook solely for personal use and useful relationship building social site amongst my actual friends whereas Twitter I use more of answering the 140 character response: What am I doing, promoting my business, and engaging with followers.

Yes, Twitter is a great source for instant information, communication (Q&A, feedback, etc..), and one stop advertising,marketing. Nonetheless, Facebook starting off as a social site for connecting with college peers has moved into a whole world of social interaction displaying and sharing your entire life – apps, instant messaging, profile, pictures and video, the wall…

Overall Facebook is the winner. As a business you're better using Twitter to get your content acknowledged, read, and increase your viewership and visibility.

I always wondered when facebook was going to twig on to this and try compete with them head to head, or pissibly merge as one thing, making the facebook status section, owned and run by twitter or something.