If Facebook opens up completely, it will lose the luster of what made it Facebook. Closed ecosystem is what the "masses" desire. Twitter will never be mainstream to the point if 175 million users. The average user, previously stated "masses" doesn't have the time of us internet related job related users to stream all day. Facebook limit of 5,000 was ingenious. Everything over 100-500 stop being "friends," and start being "connections." Opening up a stream is not something that the average user, "masses," will be able to understand, let alone participate in. I always use the example of my 100 closets real life friends, to make this point. There is maybe 5 that even know what Twitter is, there is less than 3 that knew the Facebook TOS had even changed, and there is 0 that would answer "Yes" to the question: "Do you have enough time to contribute to a stream and does that interest you?" In and out. Offline, online. You have to be able to differentiate, and you have to accept that technology, that dependence is entirely too tech focused, and is not mainstream. My 100 closets real life friends use Facebook for 5 reasons: 1- add pictures, 2- say happy birthday, 3- add a cute boy / cute girl they met the night before, 4- wall conversation(s) directly related to Gen Y (the AIM generation), 5- because everyone's on it. Wall conversation(s) is inspired by the Text Message Dependency (TMD) of this Web 2.0, Gen Y, AIM generation: it's real time, but it's an arms length away, because it is not face to face, not time sensitive specific and is internet intimate as opposed to previously mentioned face to face intimate.
mostlymatt
· 9 months ago
I totally agree. It's hard enough to convince friends to join Facebook as a closed ecosystem. If they open it up like Twitter, it could be a step backwards in getting those on the fence to join. Most of my friends that I recently encouraged to join only use Facebook to privately interact with a few select people and would be scared to use a system like Twitter where hardly anything is private.
Gregory Jost
· 9 months ago
The distinction in usage is probably what is going to keep Twitter safe for now. Until the day Facebook adds a new contact type, something looser than 'friend'. More on this here: http://www.momentarylull.com/2009/03/facebook-g...
mled
· 9 months ago
I believe a big problem with Facebook lies in the two conflicting approaches that people have to their use of it. Some see the social network as another Twitter or FriendFeed, so their privacy settings are left quite open and the numbers competition plays out again. Others see the way Facebook was built from its days as a network for close friend groups of college students, and make use of the "friends of friends" approach to just keep in touch with those that matter most. The latter, I would say, are more likely to be offline friends and so features like tagged photos are at the heart of the appeal. Wait, surely Facebook aren't suddenly struggling to see how Zuckerberg started the site and why it took off?
mark
· 9 months ago
I think facebook should be weary of chasing after other markets - do what you do best. Just because something new comes along doesn't mean you should radically change what made you such a massive success.
Fernando
· 9 months ago
I couldn't agree more with you
Oliver Wright
· 9 months ago
Though I think the existing degree of overlap will determine the impact, overall, not much will change. People put them (Twitter and Facebook) to two quite different uses. I think the wild card, and the more interesting question, is FriendFeed, since it seems (to me anyway) to be a bit of the two combined.
swag
· 9 months ago
I think you're confusing friending with following.
There are people I could care less if they stalked me on Twitter. Heck -- it's encouraged. But something like FriendFace introduces a different sphere of privacy concerns... Even if I've been thinking of making a Twitter mash-up with Google Maps to advertise who isn't home and where they live. White hat security for home break-ins? You decide. ;)
(For the record, I use either very sparingly. Neither are my thing, as IRC or IM weren't a few years back either, and still aren't.)
Clara
· 9 months ago
Not to mention that Twitter is a fad. Such a small percentage of people have anything worth reading that people will soon give up.
micah
· 9 months ago
i agree with mark. twitter and facebook need to understand that there's a place for both in the social networking sphere. i would hate to start adding random friends on facebook, because facebook is more about having an online profile. twitter, on the other hand, is more about having an online persona, and therefore you can be more open and accepting of new people. stream will be fun and is necessary to maintain an edge in the market, however the bridging of ecospheres should happen with extreme caution.
M
· 9 months ago
I think that facebook users will be reluctant to accept the real-time feed the same way that the "stalker-friendly" facebook did when it came out, letting everyone know what their friends were doing all the time, but, like they did before, the users will come around eventually and embrace it... and will soon wonder what facebook was like before it.
David
· 9 months ago
Ben - you say you believe that people with both FB and Twitter accounts use Twitter more. That seems like a fairly major conclusion, yet you offer no evidence, nor even try to explain your reasoning. Didn't you feel any need to support that conclusion?
Ben Parr
· 9 months ago
You're right. What I should have said is that i think Facebook is worried that this possibility may be true or becoming true. And with that possibility, Facebook had to act.
Adam Kochanowicz
· 9 months ago
That's a good point. I think the key here is for facebook to establish more of a subscription feature. Twitter calls it "following". Right now, fb only offers a sort of equalizer for choosing updates instead of a more static choosing of feed information.
Nikolay Kolev
· 9 months ago
It amuses me how much energy people waste regarding their privacy. Who cares about you and your private stream anyway?!
If Facebook wants to be the platform for both the privacy freaks with the credit monitoring services and people that have nothing to hide, be afraid or ashamed of, then it shouldn't force either concept and this should be configurable.
Facebook can implement the concept of following - many platforms like Digg have one- and two-way connections (friends and fans). If Facebook adds Fans as a Friend Group for everybody with no visibility to anything by default and all friend requests queue up there, then the Twitter folks can open up and configure what Fans should be able to see from their profile and stream.
I know Twitter is big now and often makes the news. I know FriendFeed is cool, I like and us it, but soon both will be history and there will be just Facebook. MySpace has its own demographic so it will shrink, but not disappear, but it's clear that Facebook will reign and there will be many victims... unfortunately.
H.K.
· 9 months ago
Real-time feed is a logical next step, many individuals I know have life news feed on their mobile devices and most have had it for at least a year now. I believe there is a lot of competition in this market already though. In general though I follow facebook's new apps/strategies with a skeptic eye due the TOS debacle. I follow data/privacy issues with This digital security site.
Ms Alex
· 9 months ago
FB news stream is a weird one as the vast major of users wouldn't feel happy making Twitter style announcements on there given the people they currently have as their FB friends. Twitter is a different crowd - you're unlikely to find *all* your work colleagues, family and exes following you on there - so Twitter users behave differently.
Paul Mason
· 9 months ago
I agree with Ms Alex in particular on here - most users of both sites have a completely different group of people to hook up with when using either one. In the main, Facebook is still used for contacting family, close friends, and work colleagues, whereas Twitter is used (apart from by those in business) for meeting the most random of people that you could ever wish to... IMHO.
ashik
· 9 months ago
Its fine as long as Im not overwhelmed with too much information.
Adam
· 9 months ago
Like some people have mentioned, facebook and twitter are two very different things. I use them very differently. I use facebook to stay in touch with actual friends; People I talk to on a semi regular basis. Most of my facebook friends are those I actually physically meet.
Twitter I use very differently. I use it to stay in touch with my niche which is the martial arts and fitness and also tech stuff like blogging tips and random other tech stuff like mashable because im also a bit of a nerd and like all that sort of stuff.
There is room for both. Im not sure how this live thing will go. One thing facebook is doing is making new ways to interact with others which I think is the future. Even the 'like' button and such things are progress. Small by themselves but combined they all add up.
Frank
· 9 months ago
"I believe that most people with a Twitter and a Facebook account use Twitter more, and I believe that possibility worried Facebook enough to take this initiative."
I don't agree with that comment. Facebook users and Twitter users are two different demographics in my view, comparing the two platforms or the behaviour of its users is apples and oranges to me. I think as facebook starts to absorb some f the functionality of other Web 2.0 sites such as posting links, videos, updating status etc. these options will be better introduced to the general public and will be used more and more on facebook to keep it interesting. The closed ecosystem on facebook allows these web 2.0 ideas to be relevant as you are sharing them with your actual friends, whereas the open ecosystem on twitter means that every internet marketer and his dog want to spam it and the whole thing gets diluted and goes in a strange direction.
Keep facebook closed would be my call and share with those that you care about.
Alberto Bina
· 9 months ago
Facebook let you make friends through "groups" and it's the propose of social media: join people with something in commom. You are as exposure as in Twitter, the difference is that the microblog is more dinamic. Twitter is a fad and it's alive as long as Facebok put some similar app on.
Adrian Moga
· 9 months ago
Facebook wanna map all the humans on the planet.. i`ll try to map human feelings for each person an try to connect them based on the single universal rule that build our world, when two force attract each other. View my blog for more details adimoga.com (watch and read the last 4 post)
Alice Cordonnier
· 9 months ago
YES, real time will change facebook users' behaviour. Indeed, they will post more comments on friends' status, they will post more new status, they will post more videos, or images. For the moment, we can see lots of changes in every user's profile, real time will make faster this changes. But it could be difficult to follow every changes, and each user will have to adapt his use of facebook to be sure to see all movements.
MEA
· 9 months ago
Leave Facebook alone. I don't want to be friends with random people on Facebook. That's what Twitter is for. Facebook is more personal. It should stay that way.
Joe Dawson
· 9 months ago
Great post I have also thought the same and I am intrigued to see how my Facebook friends will embrace the features available with the update!
Olivier Dierickx
· 9 months ago
If everything will be shown on my homepage, I think I'd go crazy. I have 500 friends. If facebook shows everything they do.. :s
Nathan Nash
· 9 months ago
If the stream is real time like twitterfall I think it would be very interesting compared to the "static" nature of facebook's current newstream. People will spend more time on the homepage watching new things stream in. Then one that peaks a users interest will eventually come along and they will explore it.
One of the reasons why I like facebook over myspace or virb is because you don't get random people trying to friend request you. You also don't get the irritating emails from bands and spammers. So in that sense I think facebook's "closed ecosystem" is much better.
I hope facebook understands that a lot of its users are there because of the privacy that they (facebook) provide them (users). As long as they don't sacrifice our privacy so that brands can solicit us online more than they already do, I won't have any problems with facebook.
Bekah
· 9 months ago
My question is where does the line get drawn between business and personal life? I try to keep my facebook personal so that I may interact with friends, but it seems that most people are now using Facebook as their resume, so perhaps the advances for user engagement will be favorable! Twitter can be a very personal application, but it is professionally engaging as you follow and are followed. These tools will be utilized differently by each user, and Facebook has to keep in mind who its audience is and not push it! People like to keep their Facebook private and not share it with the rest of the world :-) Not everyone is a techie!
Sexykitty
· 9 months ago
it's @markdavidson ! yummy.
Your Name*
· 9 months ago
I like spud
Roger Toennis
· 9 months ago
I want Facebook to spit money out of my cd-rom drive every time I reload it. Is that too much to ask?
Facebook User
· 9 months ago
Now I am thinking that implementing the killed FB Network pages with some Twitter features and removing the Wall should have been the way to go.
mlkkj
· 9 months ago
test
Gage K. Peterson
· 9 months ago
I'm pretty exited myself for this myself I must admit!
maven
· 9 months ago
StreetMavens.com a site that launched Monday is focusing on the status update as well, but doing so in a much more useful manner. The question on this site is "What's happening in your town?" This is definitely ahead of the curve and answers the question "How do you use something like status updates?" They are organizing the social "chatter" by City and further by category in real time. It allows you to know everything that's happening in your town without having to "follow" thousands of people.
Josh
· 9 months ago
I think the appeal in twitter is access to 'brands' and 'celebrities', not necessairily the open ecosystem.
To me facebook's closed ways work well and i think the appeal of facebook is that you are basically engaging in a more accesible version of your own life. You are in closer contact with people you know and are kept updated on what is happening in everyones lives.
This is proven to work well and i dont think twitter is a danger for FB. If facebook becomes a more open ecosystem then people will become tired of the constant friend requests and the spam which will follow... youtube anyone??
JOhn Wilson
· 9 months ago
LOL, I dont think anything will ever change Facebook users behavior.
Call me a drama queen if you will, but they are being deceptive with their users. Facebook would have you believe recent changes are about their home page; they say it's been redesigned. When someone called me a grumpy change hater for noticing all the things we can no longer do, I deleted everything and deactivated the account. Basically, we had more control over our walls. Now it's just a series of blocks like tot-sized Legos. I'm not interested in a kids toy.
All Comments
More on this here: http://www.momentarylull.com/2009/03/facebook-g...
There are people I could care less if they stalked me on Twitter. Heck -- it's encouraged. But something like FriendFace introduces a different sphere of privacy concerns... Even if I've been thinking of making a Twitter mash-up with Google Maps to advertise who isn't home and where they live. White hat security for home break-ins? You decide. ;)
(For the record, I use either very sparingly. Neither are my thing, as IRC or IM weren't a few years back either, and still aren't.)
If Facebook wants to be the platform for both the privacy freaks with the credit monitoring services and people that have nothing to hide, be afraid or ashamed of, then it shouldn't force either concept and this should be configurable.
Facebook can implement the concept of following - many platforms like Digg have one- and two-way connections (friends and fans). If Facebook adds Fans as a Friend Group for everybody with no visibility to anything by default and all friend requests queue up there, then the Twitter folks can open up and configure what Fans should be able to see from their profile and stream.
I know Twitter is big now and often makes the news. I know FriendFeed is cool, I like and us it, but soon both will be history and there will be just Facebook. MySpace has its own demographic so it will shrink, but not disappear, but it's clear that Facebook will reign and there will be many victims... unfortunately.
Twitter I use very differently. I use it to stay in touch with my niche which is the martial arts and fitness and also tech stuff like blogging tips and random other tech stuff like mashable because im also a bit of a nerd and like all that sort of stuff.
There is room for both. Im not sure how this live thing will go. One thing facebook is doing is making new ways to interact with others which I think is the future. Even the 'like' button and such things are progress. Small by themselves but combined they all add up.
I don't agree with that comment. Facebook users and Twitter users are two different demographics in my view, comparing the two platforms or the behaviour of its users is apples and oranges to me. I think as facebook starts to absorb some f the functionality of other Web 2.0 sites such as posting links, videos, updating status etc. these options will be better introduced to the general public and will be used more and more on facebook to keep it interesting. The closed ecosystem on facebook allows these web 2.0 ideas to be relevant as you are sharing them with your actual friends, whereas the open ecosystem on twitter means that every internet marketer and his dog want to spam it and the whole thing gets diluted and goes in a strange direction.
Keep facebook closed would be my call and share with those that you care about.
If facebook shows everything they do.. :s
One of the reasons why I like facebook over myspace or virb is because you don't get random people trying to friend request you. You also don't get the irritating emails from bands and spammers. So in that sense I think facebook's "closed ecosystem" is much better.
I hope facebook understands that a lot of its users are there because of the privacy that they (facebook) provide them (users). As long as they don't sacrifice our privacy so that brands can solicit us online more than they already do, I won't have any problems with facebook.
To me facebook's closed ways work well and i think the appeal of facebook is that you are basically engaging in a more accesible version of your own life. You are in closer contact with people you know and are kept updated on what is happening in everyones lives.
This is proven to work well and i dont think twitter is a danger for FB. If facebook becomes a more open ecosystem then people will become tired of the constant friend requests and the spam which will follow... youtube anyone??
RT
www.privacy.at.tc