Facebook Removes “Is Twittering” From Statuses

Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 9th, 2008 11:55 AM

Have you ever noticed the “is twittering” prefix for Facebook statuses? If you are my friend on the site then you definitely have. The Twitter application on Facebook enables you to display your Twitter updates via your Facebook status. It makes it easy to sync and prevents you from having to update your status in multiple locations. Most Twitter users probably have the application already installed.

For many people the “is twittering” prefix was annoying. I regularly had users asking me what “this Twitter thing” is and why I use it so much. While it could have been Twitter that removed the “is twittering” prefix, that wouldn’t make much sense because it built brand visibility for the company. As of now it appears that this was an action by Facebook but we don’t have any confirmation from Twitter or Facebook yet on this matter.

While it’s not a substantial change, for those that view their Facebook homepage on a regular basis, it definitely can be. Twitter has been building traction and I think that Facebook could very well be one of the primary sources of new user registrations. As I previously said, the “is twittering” prefix builds brand visibility and ends up driving new users to the site. It will be interesting to see how this impacts Twitter’s growth but as of now a look at the Twitter traffic chart shows that the site is beginning to show the classic hockey stick growth. It will be interesting to see if this continues.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Mark Bakalor 5 months ago 1 point
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Facebook had nothing to do with the removal. Evan Williams, Twitter founder, decided to remove the text after polling users. See his entry announcing the decision at http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/806769413

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dbrowell 5 months ago 1 point
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Well, it's gone after a prolonged (48 hour +) downtime of the Twitter app for Facebook, so I'm as inclined to believe that it's only a temporary absence, possibly something ruby/code related versus an official plug-pulling of the "is twittering" feature.

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Bryan 5 months ago 1 point
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Good move by Facebook. I thought it was kind of annoying, but then again, I'm not a big Twitter fan.

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Mark Bakalor 5 months ago 1 point
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The change was put in place by Twitter and had nothing to do with downtime or Facebook itself.

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David R. Strachan 5 months ago 1 point
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For some of us Twitter is not necessarily a medium for providing true status updates as it is a microblog - that is, providing snippets of insight or highlighting news items. So the "is twittering" prefix actually provided some much-needed context. For example, if I Twittered "Oil prices expected to reach $200 a barrel by mid 2009," the status update of "is twittering" helps with the flow. Otherwise it says "David is Oil prices are expected . . . etc," which is clumsy. I actually removed the app as a result of the change.

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Eric Dewhirst 5 months ago 1 point
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It definitely had a lot of branding for Twitter - however it also drove me a bit nutty. I can honestly say that I was close to dumping a few people from my Facebook Friends list because of the constant updates. What happens is those that are Twitter addicts dominate your status updates on FB and so you never see your other friends status updates. Old friends from High School - update their status once a day - not 20 times a day.

Twitter is a tough one for me - I want a little bit of status updates on my friends but not a constant stream of broadcast. I think it is really great for people like you Nick who need to be plugged in 24/7 with what the latest scoop is. But someone like me if it is news of any value - TC, Mashable or allFB will report it.

I for one hope that Twitter on FB does not come back and I hope they block FriendFeed as well. Not being a grump - but if I wanted Twitter I would have Twitter - but with Twitter integrated with FB I essentially am getting something I did not ask for or want.

Cheer - Eric

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David Patton 4 months ago 1 point
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I believe this was a intentional move by Twitter. Evan Williams, @ev, was conducting a twitter poll about it just a couple of days ago.

http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/805780975
http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/806769413

then they fixed the issue with "is"

http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/807446640

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