Zuckerberg Uses TweetDeck Because He Knows It Will Integrate With Facebook Soon

-FaceDeck Icon- If you’ve been following Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter feed over the past few days you probably noticed that he was updating his status from TweetDeck. So why on earth would Mark Zuckerberg use a tool which relies on a competing platform (Twitter)? If you don’t think it’s a big deal, imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to set up a MySpace page to start promoting himself in order to reach a different audience. Do you think he would do that? I doubt it.

Instead, I would postulate that Mark Zuckerberg is testing out tools to consider how they will interact with Facebook and Facebook Connect in the near future. Right now developers don’t have access to feeds but in due time developers will most definitely have access if Mark Zuckerberg is serious about the trend toward opening.

Right now celebrities and the media can’t stop chattering (or tweeting) about the power of Twitter but I’d guess that Facebook will take steps to “out open” Twitter if they don’t successfully acquire the company within months. Yes, this is all speculation but it’s based on a trend that Facebook appears to pushing forward at an amazingly quick pace.

In the next few weeks Facebook will most likely make additional announcements about the continuing trend toward openness which includes this week’s launch of the new homepage and the updates Pages product. The company has kicked into high gear and by the end of the year, I’d bet Facebook will be the most open social platform on the internet, just as David Recordon mentioned last week.

So what does this mean for enterprising entrepreneurs? If you’re going to take advantage of this new trend, you should be betting heavily on a completely open Facebook and that means look to new applications that take advantage of completely open status updates, just like Twitter. Facebook will soon enough update the API for Pages and my guess is that will include access to status updates from pages.

Why on earth would Britney Spears focus her conversation strictly to 320,000 Twitter users when she can have the same conversation with 3 times as many fans on Facebook (and probably more after the new homepage goes live)? This is just one example but the bottom line is that with the new upgrades coming to Pages and the new homepage, Facebook is moving closer to becoming a completely open platform.

You may want to position yourself so that you are taking advantage of this new shift.

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446413 Comments2009-03-09+21%3A11%3A24Nick+O%27Neill »

interesting insight.. guess we'll just have to wait and see

Comment by Luka Kladaric — March 9, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Facebook wins. Twitter loses, unless they get bought out by Facebook or maybe Google. Super post, Nick. Super.

Comment by Dave Kerpen — March 9, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
I actually don't think it'd be such a bad idea for Zuckerberg to have a MySpace page, but nonetheless, if Facebook can move as fast as you predict, I imagine Dave Kerpen is right, FB wins, Twitter loses.

Comment by Patrick Courtney — March 9, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
Or maybe it's just a useful tool. Facebook earns it money by advertising, Twitter has yet to make public it's money making strategy.

It makes scene for twitter to gain market share (of the social networking market) via using open API's and allowing app's like TwitterDeck to connect to it, however it makes no scene for facebook to do that, unless they add ad's to it.

Comment by Scott Herbert — March 9, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
Nice analysis. It will be interesting to see how Facebook evolves from both a platform and business perspective.

Mark

Comment by Mark Evans — March 9, 2009 @ 3:41 pm
As I said on another post, I think it's great that Facebook is progressing towards more openness — so long as they retain the option for granular privacy settings.

Comment by Facebook User — March 9, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
You predicted it first. I think I’ll have to start using FaceDeck…erm, TweetDeck to get a feel for things

Comment by Facebook User — March 9, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
Nick,

I think you've got the predictions just about right. However, I must say that it is ironic that most of the information for the post was proabably gleaned from reading @finkd on Twitter.

The ability of Twitter to allow any follower to read the entire history of prior tweets means that this type of stalking (like you referred to as #1 in your excellent 20 Reasons You Logged onto Facebook Today article) is only going to grow.

I also find it interesting that Mark (er @finkd) is more open on Twitter than he is on blog posts on Facebook. He also says he can't wait until Facebook removes the 5,000 friend limit because he already has 11,000+ followers on Twitter — it seems the world has turned upside down when Mark is waiting for a Facebook limitation to be removed so he can won't feel bound to Twitter.

Great article.

Thanks,

Lee Lorenzen

CEO, Altura Ventures (www.altura.com)

Comment by Lee Lorenzen — March 9, 2009 @ 9:10 pm
there is Twhirl which is another application for twitter based on Adobe Air which promote interesting cross social network features:

- connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts

# cross-post your updates to Jaiku and many other sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more via Ping.fm (ping.fm support)

so in a way Twhirl could be ahead in the game but UI compared to TweetDeck is in my opinion less appealing!

Something that may need to come for Facebook Statuses, 'FaceDeck'/'TweetDeck for FB' is shorten URLs (such as tinyurl.com, bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd) or maybe even 'userdefined.fb/a2d24' (see what i did )

in regards to 5,000 limit – Hope Mark know there is Public Pages with 600,000 fans/ followers on Facebook e.g. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Taylor-Swift/196149... so if he wants that many friends then have a public page meanwhile with groups there interest groups in the millions (such as petition for coloUr profiles)

Comment by Jamie Ellis — March 9, 2009 @ 11:35 pm
Very clever !

Comment by renaud elghozi — March 10, 2009 @ 3:35 am
I am suprised by all this Twitter vs Facebook stuff. The magic thing about Twitter is it provides a easy to digest message but more importantly, it enables the crowd to help source and find really useful information. I follow some key poeple and the URL's they attach enable me to quickly keep abreast of important stuff. The problem is Twitter is not built to satisfy MY needs. I recently posted my frustrations with the tool and even creating a wireframe for my desired interface (see http://connectedthought.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/... The danger for Twitter is they will fragment their service and potential with all these different apps coming out – none of which give you 100% of the desired functionality. Imagine if Facebook followed a similar strategy. The only reason i can imagine they are doing this is that they are not interested in developing the Twitter UI and only care about get critical mass so they can sell – hence no revenue model.

Comment by Andy Thomas — March 10, 2009 @ 9:35 am
"imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to set up a MySpace page to start promoting himself in order to reach a different audience. Do you think he would do that? I doubt it."

Check out his latest twit, er, tweet.

Comment by lmao — March 17, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
Great call on the inclusion of Facebook in TweetDeck. I am using the new beta and loving it. All they need to do now is add FriendFeed and they could control a dedicated monitor on my desktop.

Comment by Jayme Maultasch — March 20, 2009 @ 4:08 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

interesting insight.. guess we'll just have to wait and see

Comment by Luka Kladaric — March 9, 2009 @ 1:15 pm

Facebook wins. Twitter loses, unless they get bought out by Facebook or maybe Google. Super post, Nick. Super.

Comment by Dave Kerpen — March 9, 2009 @ 1:20 pm

I actually don't think it'd be such a bad idea for Zuckerberg to have a MySpace page, but nonetheless, if Facebook can move as fast as you predict, I imagine Dave Kerpen is right, FB wins, Twitter loses.

Comment by Patrick Courtney — March 9, 2009 @ 2:21 pm

Or maybe it's just a useful tool. Facebook earns it money by advertising, Twitter has yet to make public it's money making strategy.

It makes scene for twitter to gain market share (of the social networking market) via using open API's and allowing app's like TwitterDeck to connect to it, however it makes no scene for facebook to do that, unless they add ad's to it.

Comment by Scott Herbert — March 9, 2009 @ 2:27 pm

Nice analysis. It will be interesting to see how Facebook evolves from both a platform and business perspective.

Mark

Comment by Mark Evans — March 9, 2009 @ 3:41 pm

As I said on another post, I think it's great that Facebook is progressing towards more openness — so long as they retain the option for granular privacy settings.

Comment by Facebook User — March 9, 2009 @ 4:45 pm

You predicted it first. I think I’ll have to start using FaceDeck…erm, TweetDeck to get a feel for things

Comment by Facebook User — March 9, 2009 @ 5:14 pm

Nick,

I think you've got the predictions just about right. However, I must say that it is ironic that most of the information for the post was proabably gleaned from reading @finkd on Twitter.

The ability of Twitter to allow any follower to read the entire history of prior tweets means that this type of stalking (like you referred to as #1 in your excellent 20 Reasons You Logged onto Facebook Today article) is only going to grow.

I also find it interesting that Mark (er @finkd) is more open on Twitter than he is on blog posts on Facebook. He also says he can't wait until Facebook removes the 5,000 friend limit because he already has 11,000+ followers on Twitter — it seems the world has turned upside down when Mark is waiting for a Facebook limitation to be removed so he can won't feel bound to Twitter.

Great article.

Thanks,

Lee Lorenzen

CEO, Altura Ventures (www.altura.com)

Comment by Lee Lorenzen — March 9, 2009 @ 9:10 pm

there is Twhirl which is another application for twitter based on Adobe Air which promote interesting cross social network features:

- connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts

# cross-post your updates to Jaiku and many other sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more via Ping.fm (ping.fm support)

so in a way Twhirl could be ahead in the game but UI compared to TweetDeck is in my opinion less appealing!

Something that may need to come for Facebook Statuses, 'FaceDeck'/'TweetDeck for FB' is shorten URLs (such as tinyurl.com, bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd) or maybe even 'userdefined.fb/a2d24' (see what i did )

in regards to 5,000 limit – Hope Mark know there is Public Pages with 600,000 fans/ followers on Facebook e.g. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Taylor-Swift/196149... so if he wants that many friends then have a public page meanwhile with groups there interest groups in the millions (such as petition for coloUr profiles)

Comment by Jamie Ellis — March 9, 2009 @ 11:35 pm

Very clever !

Comment by renaud elghozi — March 10, 2009 @ 3:35 am

I am suprised by all this Twitter vs Facebook stuff. The magic thing about Twitter is it provides a easy to digest message but more importantly, it enables the crowd to help source and find really useful information. I follow some key poeple and the URL's they attach enable me to quickly keep abreast of important stuff. The problem is Twitter is not built to satisfy MY needs. I recently posted my frustrations with the tool and even creating a wireframe for my desired interface (see http://connectedthought.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/... The danger for Twitter is they will fragment their service and potential with all these different apps coming out – none of which give you 100% of the desired functionality. Imagine if Facebook followed a similar strategy. The only reason i can imagine they are doing this is that they are not interested in developing the Twitter UI and only care about get critical mass so they can sell – hence no revenue model.

Comment by Andy Thomas — March 10, 2009 @ 9:35 am

"imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to set up a MySpace page to start promoting himself in order to reach a different audience. Do you think he would do that? I doubt it."

Check out his latest twit, er, tweet.

Comment by lmao — March 17, 2009 @ 9:17 pm

Great call on the inclusion of Facebook in TweetDeck. I am using the new beta and loving it. All they need to do now is add FriendFeed and they could control a dedicated monitor on my desktop.

Comment by Jayme Maultasch — March 20, 2009 @ 4:08 am