They say that imitation is the biggest compliment. If that’s the case, Twitter must be very pleased with itself as the new Facebook facelift pays homage to the world’s favourite micro-blogging service.
Facebook users are now greeted by a new homepage with a stream of friends’ status updates dominating the page, not dissimilar to the look of a Twitter stream.
It’s worth remembering that Facebook’s last update was greeted with calls to return to the old version (over 1 million people joined the group last September) So, Mark Zuckerberg and co. are probably breathing a sigh of relief that the new version appears to have gained quiet approval.
Tech news site Wired has also highlighted other changes to Facebook’s privacy policy which make user settings more discoverable. Scott Gilbertson writes:
So why would anyone bother making their profile or updates public? Well, for now, Facebook is spinning the changes as an way to make yourself more discoverable. In other words, when your old friends search for you they’ll be able to find out more about you than just a message saying “you must be friends with this person in order to see their profile.”
But the change also lays the groundwork for adding yet another feature borrowed from Twitter — the one-way relationship, or the ability to “follow” someone, as it’s known in Twitter parlance.
And there’s the rub. Personally, I don’t think that Twitter and Facebook are competitors (the graph below from the San Francisco Chronicle shows that Twitter’s got a long, long way to catch up with Facebook in the US anyway).
I use them both differently. With Facebook, I value the ringed fence that only allows friends to share my personal online world. Twitter’s different. I don’t mind who follows me (not many people do, by the way, so feel free…) and I don’t feel I have to know someone to follow them either.
According to our friends in San Francisco, this is also backed up by Hitwise data, which shows that after Google, the first destination for Twitter users is Facebook. It seems that the two can live harmoniously together – for now.
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