One week I’m saying that Twitter is about to die and the next week I’m saying that the company is a serious challenge to Facebook. That doesn’t make sense, does it? Let me explain. Last week in what Om Malik accurately called “a severe case of hyperbole”, I stated that Facebook’s new status API would bring death to Twitter. I still firmly believe that an open status API from Facebook could pose as a serious threat but under their current iteration it won’t. That’s because the existing status API is slow and limited in scope.

Go take a look at and test the Twitter search API and you’ll see the massive opportunity that abounds. Yesterday there was a ton of buzz about Yahoo’s new search API which makes sense. Search is still the most valuable service on the web yet Yahoo’s search API still doesn’t reach the full potential that I believe Twitter’s API provides.

Recently I’ve been comparing the Twitter API to what it would be like if Google had provided total access to their crawling engine when the company first launched. Theoretically anybody could create an instant search engine based on the millions of links posted on the site. There is also an infinite number of news aggregation possibilities. So if you were a developer choosing between developing something for Twitter versus something for Facebook, how would you decide which to use?

Key Value Proposition

One logical way to examine which service to leverage first is to examine what the key value proposition is provided by each service. Here’s what I’ve narrowed down as the key value propositions presented by both companies:
Facebook

• Ability to post to a user’s newsfeed – Many perceive the news feeds as the most valuable component of Facebook’s platform. They would be right in the sense that user news feeds provide developers with another promotional distribution channel.
• Ability to send application requests to friends – Despite the risk of application request insensitivity by overloading users with application invites, inviting users to applications still appears to serve as a large source of new application installs. don’t Facebook Connect enabled websites currently have access to this functionality making this a core benefit to only Facebook platform apps. (See update below)
• Social graph relevance – The ability to instantly have access to all of a user’s friends’ data is practically priceless. Social relevance is proven to increase engagement on applications and Facebook Connect enabled websites.

Twitter

• Unfiltered access to Twitter’s data – Twitter gives total access to public tweet data (the majority of tweets are public). This information can be aggregated and stored in developers’ databases without limitation.
• Ability to post promotional tweets on behalf of users – This is my attempt at coming up with the equivalent of Facebook’s application request. The closest thing I could come up with is the ability to send “AT replies” to users via the Twitter API.
• Access to follower data – Twitter grants developers access to follower data with the user’s permission.

Each API provides different value propositions and ultimately deciding which API to use is something to be explored on a case by case basis. There are tons of differences and plenty of similarities. There’s a huge difference between the two companies though: Twitter provides developers with practically unfiltered access to their core feature whereas Facebook doesn’t.

Should Facebook Be Worried?

When Facebook provided access to the platform almost 2 years ago, thousands of developer flocked to launch applications on the platform. Today, hundreds of applications continue to launch. There were practically no limitations to the viral component of Facebook when they launched their platform but with in a short amount of time, many limitations were instituted.

Facebook still doesn’t provide developers with read access to users’ shared items or news feeds, two of the most valuable components within Facebook from a data perspective. There is access to status updates but a user of their friends must have added your application before you have access to that data. Contrast that with Twitter where the vast majority of tweets are public information that can accessed by developers.

If Facebook granted developers unfiltered access to their core features there would be a second wave of the Facebook platform with all developers rushing to develop interesting products from Facebook’s data. This sort of unfiltered access is what I’ve been arguing would “kill Twitter”. By opening up this information Facebook essentially bests Twitter’s core value proposition: unfiltered access to tweet data.

Facebook Won’t Open Completely
Honestly I don’t see Facebook opening up as much as Twitter has. Doing so fundamentally violates users’ trust and quite possibly violates privacy laws. The relationship that Twitter establishes with new users from the beginning is most frequently a public one. While users can choose to have a private Twitter experience, most users choose not to.

On Facebook, users perceive that they are in a “walled garden” which keeps their information private, hence the reason that there is practically a firestorm anytime a user’s information becomes public. Wait, you can access my photos? Security risk! You can view my friends through Google? Privacy invasion! The relationship that Facebook establishes with users is inherently restricted form the get go. This could in fact turn out to be Facebook’s greatest weakness.

If the world is truly becoming completely public and we have essentially eliminated the concept of a private world, Twitter is a clear long-term winner. However as long as users want to have the impression of a private world (despite ongoing security lapses), Facebook will thrive. Twitter is clearly a huge threat to Facebook though, especially among those that believe we live in a public world.

On Twitter, privacy is like a light switch, it’s either on or off. Facebook on the other hand provides complex “granular” privacy settings, which would explain the popularity of my article last week on Facebook privacy. So should Facebook be worried about Twitter? Hell yeah, they provide practically unlimited access to extremely valuable data and it’s pretty much completely public.

Will Facebook ever be able to “eliminate the Twitter threat”? Not unless the company decides to make a huge jump and grant developers total access to users’ statuses and shared items, which I don’t see happening anytime soon. I certainly hope they do but for the time being Twitter will continue to experience explosive growth.

Update
I’ve been contacted by Facebook and wanted to clarify something. Apparently invites are possible via Facebook Connect. I simply wasn’t able to implement it while personally developing with Connect. I am currently learning what the process is for implementing application invites via Facebook Connect and I will be sure to share that with the readers once I know more.