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This evening, Facebook began fully promoting the new Twitter syncing tool via the top of Facebook Pages and are encouraging page admins to sync with Twitter. With millions of page administrators (which still appear to be a fraction of all users), this new tool promotion will also serve as a significant promotion for Twitter in general. At this point the service is well known but by launching the product internally and making people say “Why’d they do that?”, Facebook is in essence using Twitter to keep their own company honest.
All along Mark Zuckerberg has been clear about his decision to continue opening the platform and building a better experience that enables users to share more effectively. Through launching this service it appears to be a subtle way of saying “We’re not focused anymore on competing with Twitter”. I’ve long been arguing that Twitter is a significant threat to Facebook but perhaps there’s enough room for both companies to play.
Facebook is further along with building a team and their developers don’t appear to be running out the door with open arms to Twitter … at least not all of them. Facebook still presents a major opportunity and with their ability to help enhance users’ “real-life connections”, there is a clear differentiator. Twitter has completely embraced openness, and it has forced Facebook to expedite the process of further opening the Facebook platform.
While ironic, in that Facebook was the leader of openness on the social web initially, Facebook’s recent hires emphasize that the company is truly committed to fully opening their system for developers (or at least that image has been painted). This opening will pave the way for Facebook to serve as the largest identity provider on the web in addition to the largest platform for enhancing social interactions in an interconnected world.
What’s truly exciting about all this is that Facebook’s decision to work toward killing the Twitter versus Facebook debate with their new tool can help us to see that there is a much broader vision for the future of the social web. Facebook will aim to continue being the leader of that space. As for Twitter, they can play in the social web sandbox too … there’s room for everybody.
There are now only a few more steps before Facebook and Twitter can truly kill the beef between them: Twitter should implement Facebook Connect and Facebook should let users export statuses to Twitter. How long do you think it will be before any walls between the two companies are finally gone? Will Twitter soon be in an open relationship with Facebook?
well i would say that the so called campaign of Facebook to take over twitter was rumor after all
Thanks for the post & the tweet I got here from
It is an interesting development for Facebook and in my humble opinion a good one. Twitter and Facebook are complementary services I think. The issue of online identity is going to be a tricky one though.
Digital identity has been an issue for a long time and in response to these concerns I got a digital certificate for my email account yesterday. It would be good if that became more popular and the certification authorities would agree on some standards. Also there is some research being done at Stanford on platforms that is in this area.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out over the next couple of years.
Hi Nick
I’m getting motivated more and more to use FB as a central base for myself and client work now that they are opening up more.
btw you can setup FB profiles to post status to Twitter using http://blog.socialtoo.com/2009/08/24/socialtoo-status-your-central-hub-for-posting-to-facebook-and-twitter/
It drives me insane that this is just for page admins. I just want to be able to push my status to twitter, is that really to much to ask?
It will happen, maybe with in the next year, as twitter moves to expand its market, twitter will have to become more open with social platforming. And it’ll probably start with facebook. The twitter facebook connect, might never come to be, but with twitter api like fb 140 it makes connecting with your friends much eaiser across platforms
Well I hope we’re not being too optimistic by thinking so, but I believe you’re right. The user experience is quite different from facebook to twitter. I’d like a cleaner facebook UI and a less noisy twitter stream (my own fault, I’m a glutton for information). Friendfeed was/is a nice balance but I’m not sure what’s happening with that service long term.
Well they had to do something. After banishing “updates” to within the inbox (which by the way, I think is a terrible idea - I don’t anyone who looks at that anyone), pages really are only going to be visible now through status updates anyway.
How do I get this to work?
@Mike: who asked:
It drives me insane that this is just for page admins. I just want to be able to push my status to twitter, is that really to much to ask?
Are you asking about your personal page at Facebook? Becasue the abilty to link FB Status updates and Twitter has bee around for quite some time.. look for the Twitter Ap on FB and then also you can hook it up through the settings on Twitter.
As for the whole rest of this “new service”… I say “eh.”
OK, a few weeks ago I might have been impressed that we were getting slightly closer to linking the two services with regard to Public Profile Pages, but what I really really wanted to be able to do was to have Twitter updates become Fan Page Status and hit the live feeds.
Happily, I fiqured that out already.. so if anyone is still fustrated with this or would like the updates to work both ways, the “official” sharing of theis social media distribution trick will be posted on 9/3/09 here: http://www.dragonsearchmarketing.com/blog/social-media-and-the-love-of-friendfeed
Please enjoy and share at will!