“If Facebook opened up statuses tomorrow, Twitter would essentially become a ghost town.”

No.

No it would not.

Interesting analysis; however, I think if yo take a look at the demographic, twitter users are generally early adopters/geeks while facebook is sort of this widely used platform. This is evident with the fact that most facebook users can barely operate one of its most basic function;Facebook users constantly forget to delete “is” when they update there status message. How can they handle a full-fledged microblogging platform. Facebook is in my eyes more of a directory/rolodex for friends, rather than a place for great conversation.

You are funny! Thanks for the Friday evening entertainment.

I’d sooner dump Facebook

No, it would not! They’re two totally different sites designed for obviously different purposes and audiences. It’s like saying that now that Facebook has applications like Mindjolt, portals such as Kongregate would disappear.
Adding features to a product in most cases makes it better, but you’re missing a key point. Facebook: full-fledged social network. Twitter: simple, quick-posting environment.

I’m curious what the outcome would be. I feel like part of the beauty of Twitter is that it’s so simple and focused just on one thing. I hardly touch my FB account, but I’m on twitter daily because it suits my needs.

“…there will be less than 500 people complaining about Facebook’s friend limit if they opened up status updates to the public.”

And the fact that they have all those followers means that people listen to what they say. You exclude the thought leaders, you preclude all significant motion toward your solution.

Social networks are not homogeneous in audience, scope, or intent, but your analysis leads one to think that Facebook statuses are a drop-in replacement for tweets, which they most adamantly are not: an individual logging into Facebook is bombarded with media and interaction requests at every turn; by contrast, someone logging into Twitter sees a timeline with 20 brief messages.

The point is that Facebook can not, by merit of its enormous scope, be as simple or as focused as Twitter, whose simplicity is the very thing that grants its legitimacy to its (current) core market: social media junkies, journalists, and geeks.

Wow Nick - big props for posting this man. I’ve been waiting for someone serious (re: both well known & respected) to take on the establishment position (FUD) regarding Twitter’s ‘impenetrable position & undeniable future value’

“Much of Twitter’s value is preached by their super users who have thousands of followers. Without these super users, Twitter wouldn’t get as much buzz.” = Tip of iceberg.

You’re on to something Nick - stay with it! I think you’ll be surprised how many ‘un-famous-followers’ come out in support of such “wacky” claims.

Don’t let the A-Listers shout you down - trust me, us “followers” aren’t stupid - we get the game being played on us… From the perspective of those of us outside the gateway (~beltway), the aforementioned unilateral support of twitter over facebook reads a lot Israel in relation to Palestine - YOU SIMPLY CAN’T SAY THIS SORT OF STUFF IN PUBLIC, ON THE RECORD MAN! (see: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/greenwalds-poin.html)

Anywho - great post Nick - here’s to hoping its merely the opening chapter of a far more fleshed out opus.

“Overnight if Facebook added status to this method, Twitter would be destroyed..If Facebook opened up statuses tomorrow, Twitter would essentially become a ghost town.”

What a knee-slapper this ‘analysis’ was.

its can affect twitter but i dont thing it can kill twitter, after fb open status comment more ppl at fb comment compare to twitter. i sync both of it.

how if twitter launch its “twitter connect”?

Hi Nick, very interesting discussion. However, I’m not convinced Facebook will have that effect if they simply opened up their API to allow status updates. Facebook is a huge social platform, fantastic for developers to build apps. But it’s a little unwieldy to be used as an on-the-fly microblogging platform like Twitter. It’s the speed and light-weight feel of Twitter that draws the audience.

Funny, as Faizal points out, a “Twitter Connect” might be the gamesaver if Facebook were to become competition… that is a very interesting thought.

Savvy users don’t always “cross the streams.” I have people I network with on Twitter that I wouldn’t share on Facebook, and vice versa.

It’s not about the function, it’s about which of your connections you want to hit.

The fact is that if Facebook gave developers the ability to search statuses, it wouldn’t produce anything good.

Facebook is based around interacting with your friends, and half of its content is based on pictures/videos. There is no way to search all of that

Also, it would turn a lot of Facebook users off because the privacy that Facebook has gone long lengths to *protect*, would instantly vanish.

And with that privacy would go users, because they would probably feel Facebook betrayed them when some random person starts seeing the exact address they will be at tomorrow night

It will not kill Twitter overnight (catchy title, though) — Twitter and Facebook have different demographics. It will be bigger than Twitter. I’m continually impressed by how Facebook manages to gain new internet users — people who never heard of web 2.0 or social networking before. And these new people are updating their statuses left and right. Somebody (was it Laporte or Scoble) that said Twitter would boom when Paris Hilton or Britney Spears started using it. Well that didn’t happen.

When did Facebook stop returning status in userInfo? It’s still in the documentation, and is supposed to be returned - are you not seeing it? Also, you can retrieve a user’s status via simple RSS (which is completely public), so, technically, we’re already there - no one has written anything around it yet however.

You’re looking at two different audiences and you’re also leaving out a lot of key comparisons. Not surprising, considering this is a Facebook-slanted blog.

Next.

I love Twitter, but…..
what is Facebook?

Good Work on the over-dramatic title but no. Just no.

“On Twitter there are only 448 users with more than 5,000 followers according to Twitterholic. That means there will be less than 500 people complaining about Facebook’s friend limit if they opened up status updates to the public.”

I don’t think your logic is right on this. It wouldn’t just be those 448 affected; it would also be those who want to become friends of the 448 and can’t because of Facebook’s limit. That would be a much larger number wouldn’t it?

And by their very nature, the 448 are likely to be highly vocal in expressing their views - and widely listened to. So again, saying “only 448″ I think rather understates the impact?

Perhaps I need to reexamine the way I use Facebook, but I am not into it the way I’m into twitter. Twitter updates feel different. They feel a bit more urgent and the audience seems to want the links I share and share a whole heck of a lot of knowledge back with me. I am seeing so many old friends, acquaintances, third cousins and the like on Facebook that I can’t say that it would be the same. I do understand that this is due to my own methods, but maybe I’m off the mark here.

Sorry, but not going to happen. A ghost town? That’s absurd.

Oh yeah, you also mentioned Twitter twice at the end.

“That means there will be less than 500 people complaining about Facebook’s friend limit if they opened up status updates to the public.”

Those 500 are very noisy.

Status is available in the API. See my app Facile: http://elidourado.wordpress.com/software/facile/

I don’t even know where to begin pointing out what’s wrong with this.

To begin, Twitter and Facebook cater to two very different crowds. The people who use Twitter may also use Facebook, but that would be more of a complement (in the set theory sense) than something they would rather switch to. I can’t speak for all us Twitter users, but I’d say that we like Twitter and other narrow-focused services over Facebook because it distributes all our information in a way that makes it less likely that a single service disruption could cause major problems.

What happens if Twitter goes fail whale for a while? Most of us have FriendFeed, Identi.ca, etc. which we can use in the meantime. If Facebook crashes? Well, then you’re just f**ked. Never mind the privacy implications of putting all our eggs in one basket!

People who use Facebook primarily aren’t the same people who use Twitter now. And Facebook is passing out status information; after all, whenever I change my status in Facebook, it shortly shows up on FriendFeed. Which just makes this post even less news and even more entertainment.

Sorry, Nick, but you’re so, so wrong about all this, it hurts to read it.

Much of Twitter’s power is in the simplicity of using it via SMS. I can’t update my Facebook status from my mobile because of their carrier restrictions. Assuming everything else you said makes sense (which it kinda doesn’t), Facebook is still shooting itself in the foot by only supporting a few mobile carriers.

Would sooner dump FB too… Can’t wait for something better to come out so I can delete my FB and protect my privacy for real.

When will you write about this

http://albumoftheday.com/facebook

Well?

Twitter and FB might be one company in the future, but I am a bit sceptical regarding your analysis as I do not feel my Facebook updates would be as interesting as my twits.

I lost all interest in your blog and your opinions after the last sentence of the first paragraph: ‘User’s must grant you access to their information before you can view their details.’

If you want to be taken even remotely seriously, learn basic English grammar. user’s == belonging to the user, users == more than one user.

Twitter for the win!
Facebook = Meh…

Who cares what school you are from and what your pretty photos look like, (Yeah, I know, family and friends etc… But that’s not my point here.)

I more am interested in meeting interesting intelligent people and especially, what they have to say.

Twitter for me, is the place for this. Fakebook… No.

I’m musing to myself that the fact that I’m viewing this conversation, and that so many are engaged is a perfect demonstration of how far weve come from hunter gatherers into a culture of leisure and thou;ght; we can afford the time and have the safety for contemplation. Not even sure that we can even justify eating meat or any kind of war. I personally love twitter for its insistence on conciseness via character limit and its fluid real time flow.

WHY NOT JUST DO IT? (sorry Nike). I blogged about this post here - http://weblogs.asp.net/sbchatterjee/archive/2009/01/03/facebook-vs-twitter-a-division-of-the-spoils.aspx

@Jesse Stay - I concur (partially) with your position. The FB status can be foraged but not much has been done about it nor is the current documentation adequate (a la Twitter -keep in mind that the Twitter ‘Direct Message’ API is still in the works).

Microsoft Office Groove thrives on the online presence of workspace members and this is a core requirement of any collaborative platform or social networking platform. Google Mail and others (SharePoint & LinkedIn?) would do the same.

I use Facebook for relatively low-bandwith communication with a network consisting of almost everyone I know.

I use Twitter for high-bandwidth communication with a smaller network of people who’re (presumably) actually interested in my 40-60 tweets a day.

It would take a big change for me to move my Twitter activity to Facebook.

The author clearly does not understand what twitter is really about.

As others above have said, I use Facebook and Twitter for different communities. My Facebook friends are all known to me personally. I have no idea who many of my Twitter followers are, and have never met many of my follows. There’s very little overlap between my Facebook and Twitter communities. My facebook friends wouldn’t want half a dozen status updates a day. Etc. For me, Twitter and Facebook are for different purposes.

We all use these services for slightly different purposes. Twittering via Facebook statuses might work for you. That doesn’t mean it will work for everyone…

“Overnight if Facebook added status to this method, Twitter would be destroyed.”

I’m flabbergasted that anyone could write such tripe. This is probably the most ill-informed comment I have ever seen on Facebook and Twitter. Is this a joke or are you just completely incompetent?

I think people use Twitter for an entirely different purpose than Facebook. The problem occurs when websites try to dominate to many areas of internet use. Stick to what you are good at, there is plenty of room for everyone to have their cake.

WOah. Twitter is more open… Facebook is more closed….
People Tweet for different reasons… People use Facebook for a different reason…

As a semi-early-adopter/psuedo-geek, I was super-surprised that so many people so adamantly disagreed with you.

I have sought in vain for a reason that I would need to use Twitter when my FB status updates provide worlds of fun and entertainment for friends and associates alike (I have at least a few “friends” on FB who I met through their blogs, etc.)

But I’m not using Twitter for business-related purposes, so maybe if I was, I would feel differently.

Two different things entirely. I use fb for friends
and family. I use Twitter to learn more about social networking and I follow those top in-the-know people. I’ve gained a huge amount of info in a short time with Twitter contacts. I just downloaded Twirl to make it easier to keep track. I subscribe to TwitterSan to keep abreast of what’s happening in my business area. It works for me.

The new FaceTwitter application I’m developing will kill them both, in less time than overnight. It integrates all your social apps, bank accounts, insurance policies, FBI records, shoe size, high school prom photos, and videos of puppies falling asleep into one app.. causing your face to twitter violently and you fall over with a brain aneurysm. I’m not even kidding.

Facebook vs Twitter ?
Not same market , Not same area …

Facebook is for friends
Twitter for Trenders & E-fluencers

,)

Twitter sux

Nick, as I replied in your more recent blog post and as described in my own post at http://voirol.com/blog/2009/03/14/will-facebook-kill-twitter/ , I think the concept of Facebook vs Twitter might be barking up the wrong tree. They serve distinctly different needs and as the core of their network structure is different I can’t see them grazing on each other’s turf in anything but the most marginal of ways.

No, I don’t think Facebook would kill Twitter, at least not overnight. Twitter is much different from Facebook. People can use both of them as they each serve different functions. One does not have to abandon one to use another. One can definitely enjoy using both.

Twitter is Web 2.0+ & Facebook is, at best, Web 1.5.

Thank you for this valuable and compact post.Twitter’s got problems, but it’s better than Facebook!