Why Does Facebook Want To Be Twitter?

They each serve two different and distinct purposes on the Internet. So why does Facebook feel the need to be like Twitter?

Twitter is simple, anyone can see your short updates unless you choose to lock your profile, then only approved friends can see your short updates. Twitter added features as its users implemented them themselves. The @username form of communication, started by the users, as was the #hashtag. Twitter Search was created separately and then bought and incorporated by Twitter into the user’s profiles. But through it all the overall look, feel and usage of the social media site remained the same. Facebook is a different story.

Facebook began as the service about who you know. Find those you know and love, friend them, ignore those who you dislike or don’t know and they won’t see anything from you. And it worked! Facebook surpassed MySpace in the Alexa rankings (Facebook currently is #4, MySpace is #11) and continues to dominate the realm of social media. Then came the News Feed, and then the profile redesign, and then the new News Feed (now with more Twitter) and now a feature I like to call Super-Public Sharing which will make way for Facebook Search. Why these new “features?”

Simple. Twitter has been getting all of the attention and Facebook is scared. Threatened, I’d argue. They’re wondering, “How can we be just like them?”  Twitter’s breaking-news, trending and search functionalities create a whole new way to look at the world and what’s going on, so does Facebook, but in a different way.

Facebook worked incredibly well a year ago doing what it did best, connecting people who knew one another. And Twitter works in its own way, connecting the world but at an arm’s length. Why does Facebook need to turn everything public to try to be Twitter?

I guess the part that baffles me is when you do something well and people adore your website and what you’ve created, why go ahead and change all of that? Add things, don’t rearrange.

  1. wastedprotoplasm answered: Money became involved. Facebook, once run as a social networking tool is now run as a business. Twitter seemed popular,so they had to copy it
  2. monicathatisall answered: myspace did the same thing with mimicking facebook though. i mean everyone is constantly trying to be the best. facebook wants to be on top.
  3. ags reblogged this from zackshapiro and added:
    real value lies in its data,...realizing that to monetize
  4. zackshapiro posted this