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This afternoon Facebook sent out a message to developers to ask them for feedback on the Facebook platform. I’ve included one page of that poll below which is targeted at determining developers’ interest in building applications on Twitter. It’s clear that Facebook is concerned about developers shifting their development time from Facebook to Twitter, although there are still plenty of developers who are fully reliant on Facebook.
The poll was not however completely focused on Twitter but it has become clear that between the poll and today’s announcements, Facebook has Twitter in sight and they are shooting to kill. I asked my Twitter followers whether or not they would ever make the shift back to Facebook from Twitter for following users’ public information. Most of them flat out said no.
Regardles of whether or not a shift actually takes place, Facebook is learning a big lesson from Twitter which is openness is already better. Facebook continues to emphasize that they are working open their feeds though and open information in general. Today David Recordon argued that Facebook will no longer be a walled garden by 2010 and based on the company’s recent statements, I’d have to agree.
The biggest concern for Facebook right now is developer attention and that’s one of the reasons they sent out a poll this afternoon. If Facebook can’t maintain the developers’ attention, then Facebook as a platform can’t exist. Fortunately for Facebook, more than 175 million active users is clearly a strong value proposition for any developer.
Update
Josh Elman just clarified in the comments that the reason this portion of the survey showed up was because I selected “Twitter” as one of the other platforms I was developing for. Had I selected another platform, that one would have shown up as well. Total misunderstanding!
Facebook is where realtors are starting their social media adventure. A least here in central va. A lot of the national instructors are starting to teach SN to those that are holding on to real estate as their main source if income. Very few Twitter RE users. I see FB controlling my profession as it become easy for us to use. NAR has a new social media head: Tood Carpenter..great move NAR!
too late. twitter just died!
Considering Facebook seems to be ignorant of proper grammar (see Twitter is much better THEN Facebook, Facebook is better THEN Twitter), I’ll be holding on to my Twitter account for a while.
..and they gave this to developers?
I think it’s a bit difficult to determine just how to compare them, seeing as they serve two relatively different purposes. One for social networking, “connecting”, finding old friends, and throwing yourself and images of yourself out to the public, whereas the other is simply a statement of your current thought or feeling to be shared with others. Of course one may be better at “making money” than another, and so on. I realize they’re more worried about losing users, etc, but personally I prefer to have both. I enjoy having my Facebook profile to store my photos, communicate with friends on walls in 140+ characters, and more, but i also enjoy sending my texts to 40404 containing my current state of mind in 140 characters or less. I think it’s interesting to have to compartmentalize how you feel/think into so many words; it almost encourages you to make sure that you know what you’re feeling as a solid though rather than a bunch of different feelings. (what effect does this have on people? to have to say what they think in 140 characters or less? Will we become better at “getting to the point” as a society instead of telling these huge stories about our problems? maybe I’m rambling too much here)
Most people I know, or at least people who already have a Facebook page, don’t know what Twitter is or have already rejected it’s function as “but I can already do that with Facebook.” I think most tech-savvy, blogging types are all aware that Twitter exists and enjoy its’ use, but this is a very small portion of the population, and it will be hard to convince the general population that Twitter is a valuable tool.
For now, I just say let it be. If you want both, keep them both. For god’s sake, sync your Facebook status with your Tweets and your problem is solved.
Nick -
Just wanted to clarify this. This is part of an awesome survey we are trying to do to learn more about our amazing developer community. We picked a list of several other social sites and platforms (desktop, web, mobile, etc.) that developers using Facebook Platform may be interested in developing for. For each site that you selected, the survey then asks you to compare your experience with that site or platform with Facebook to help us improve. This isn’t just a page in the broad survey unless you say you develop for Twitter and we’re trying to get your comparison and insights.
If you are a developer for Facebook and want to give us feedback, I’d love to invite you to fill out our survey: http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1169261
Ahhh … now I understand Josh … I didn’t realize this was because I selected Twitter!
To those loyal twitter supporters, let me ask this question and see if you can give convincing answer. If you can, twitter may be just fine. Otherwise, it probably has been dying:
I think this is a twitter killer — it allows ppl to follow a person without permission, which is exactly how twitter differentiate itself from facebook, and the only plausible difference.
I can’t imagine someone can do the same thing on a single website (which is facebook) would bother to log into another website (which is twitter).
Trying to keep update about news on Facebook
Nick,
I want to add something to Josh’s clarification from facebook.
It is important for facebook or any platform company to understand what other platform their developers are interested in because it will help prioritize integration points.
eg. In the facebook meetup mailing list we saw a slew of questions about iphone development and it led to apps like iphone from Tim Burks on facebook. Twitter app on facebook is so handy and has introduced many on facebook to twitter.
I am someone who welcomes open access to integrate across platforms because it can really create cool mashups.
Both Facebook and Twitter are great platforms for different reasons. We choose to use one or the other at a point in time based on what we need to accomplish. It is ludicrous to kill one or the other. Neither one is going to fail because they are both great (just for different reasons). To expect either one to fail would be the same as saying that the digital camera is going to lose its market to the camcorder because with the camcorder you can record moving images instead of only still images, and because of that the camcorder is more evolved and better then the camera. That’s well… kinda silly!
@Sudha Jamthe… exactly!