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jacobscott

I would be more worried about the "it" that is facebook providing a better experience for their core usecases.

From what I can tell, given the new Facebook UI, all Facebook needs to do to implement twitter is:

* Streamline directed relationships (fan versus friend) for "follow" functionality

* Streamline status privacy settings (so that changing your status can be equivalent to a tweet)

* Write lite.facebook.com that looks just like twitter/jaiku/etc

In addition, it seems to me that Facebook has the following advantages over twitter:

* Funding: 500mm versus 50mm

* Scale Facebook has many more users and engineers

* Platform/Apps Facebook has a rich platform, twitter doesn't

Thoughts?

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The biggest difference between Twitter and Facebook updates (at the moment) is that your Facebook news feed is limited by who you have some connection to (albeit possibly very tenuous). The beauty (and ugliness) of Twitter is that it's interest or topic-based - you don't need a pre-existing connection to start following or viewing someone's public tweets.

That being said, I will be sad if Twitter is subsumed by Google or Facebook.

EDIT: Technically easy but Facebook is a good walled-garden (privacy controls). I don't know if they'll let some public weeds in just to compete with Twitter. Twitter allowing Facebook users to auto-post an update to their Twitter identity could work.

So Facebook makes it easier to post public news feed items, and then writes a twitter-like UI on top of that data. There are obviously subtle usability issues here, but technically it seems straightforward...

Neither Twitter nor Facebook are who they are for technical reasons; their popularity was more about timing the market and being the right company at the right time. Unlike say Google, who are on top for technical reasons and dominated by being smarter, faster, and better.

Since their popularity isn't based upon their technology, beating them requires a hell of a lot more than just duplicating their technology.

Twitter is still nascent compared to Facebook traffic-wise, and I bet that the vast majority of twitter users are also facebook users. So, if Facebook gives you the same functionality AND user experience, why maintain your twitter account?

Different audience.

Facebook doesn't have the live search that makes Twitter so powerful. This is a large part of the user experience for many.

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