In the last few months it seems that Facebook is trying to go after and in many ways copy Twitter. Starting from changing how your status messages are shared to the new search capabilities and of course the acquisition of FriendFeed.
Many bloggers and news papers wrote about this race after Twitter, but not enough actually stopped to ask whether going after Twitter is the right thing to do.
Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand why Facebook is trying to go after Twitter. Advertising on social networks still hasn’t proved itself as a huge business and real time search promise to be the next Google.
But I fear that in this race, Facebook might lose many of the things that still makes it much more dominant than Twitter (Facebook just became the 4th largest site in the world, way ahead of Twitter).
Try to think how you use Twitter and how you use Facebook today. Look at how your friends are using these services. Although sometimes these services looks very similar (distributed messaging system), in reality people use them in a very different way.
While Twitter became the number one option for self (or brand) promotion and getting in touch with your fans or customer, Facebook is still all about your connecting with your friends.
Look even at the terminology both services use. To “Follow” someone is something much less personal than to “Ask to be a friend”. While most people (exclude celebrities) follow sometime hundreds or thousands of people in Twitter, in Facebook they still connect with just tens or low hundreds of people.
I also noticed that I see a lot more conversations formed in Facebook comments than on Twitter (using @mentions). Not to mention that people are still sharing many more pictures and videos on Facebook than on Twitter.
All these facts makes it much easier to filter the noise and connect with your friends on Facebook than on Twitter. The risk Facebook are taking is that by duplicating Twitter functionality, they will actually change the way people are using it – letting brands, consultants and self promotion take hold of it. And when it happens, there is no way back.
So what should Facebook do? Should they keep going after Twitter or should the focus on inventing advertising solutions that work on their current platform.
Or maybe the can they try and do both? What do you think?
This blog is Shahar Nechmad' stream of Consciousness.
