Tuesday

Why Facebook Will Never Be Twitter

Facebook has been getting a series of facelifts recently, and while Facebook itself is convinced that they’re doing it so their users can enjoy the service better and take advantage of all the features, we all know they’re trying to jack Twitter’s swagger.

Sadly, it makes sense. The internet isn’t all about original ideas anymore, it’s mainly about how to get the most users by stealing as many ideas as possible from other sites and repackaging them as original. Before trying to be Twitter, Facebook was trying to be FriendFeed, which in turn was trying to be more like Twitter (weird, right?).

Twitter’s success doesn’t come because it offers a better service (it’s down almost everyday, be it planned or not) or because it offers great communication opportunities (while there are thousands of new users everyday, the idea is  not that attractive to people, which is why most of your friend’s aren’t on it already). Twitter’s success can be credited to one thing: it’s simple.

The API is easy to implement, so developers use it, spawning new and creative applications daily. Tech blogs pick up these new applications, and no matter how creative and fun to use it is, they always mention Twitter’s name. This is free publicity that draw’s attention to Twitter’s simple-yet-quirky service.

So, why can’t Facebook be Twitter? Well, it’s not simple. Facebook is a complicated mess of APIs, user-streams, applications, and notifications, that really goes over peoples’ heads. Facebook is complicated. It’s not easy to develop applications for Facebook, and it’s not easy to actually get the most out of Facebook without spending time learning how to use it.

Most people stick to the usual applications (the one’s that come with Facebook to begin with) and only play with third-party apps if they’re being force-fed to them through the main activity stream.

So there you have it: Facebook is trying really hard to be Twitter and it keeps missing the whole point. Twitter is twitter because it’s simple. Trying to be like Twitter without downright changing your domain name to Twitter is only going to generate more problems, since you’ll always have the more intricate (and thus less usable) service.

Now I have to get back to updating my Facebook status through Twitter, which in turn I update through Twhirl or Twibble, depending where I am.

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• 7 Ways to Promote Your Startup in Facebook
• Why We All Love Twitter and No One Cares About Your Startup
• PR and Publicity Ain’t the Same Thing