Why Facebook will never be Twitter
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
I really hope Facebook will add a "Public" tab under my profile. More and more I find myself posting status messages that I would LIKE to make public.
Personally I was very pessimistic about FB when they made status messages the focus. Months later, I have to applaud them. My engagement on FB has increased many folds since.
Unless they let themselves get acquired, Posterous will beat every other sharing service. The brand will probably fade into the background though, and we'll all just have a "page." They seem close to the platonic form of electronic posts already. They're not there yet, but they're at least moving in the right direction, toward something like this Model M I'm typing on, or humanoids or sharks or Lisp.
Edit: Rescinded dumb comparison to telegraph, changed 'niche to 'brand, and a few slight rewordings. Posterous won't "wipe out" anyone; in fact, that's exactly why they can win.
I think the Posterous team is terrific. They add shitloads of features, work hard, and Garry gave me a ton of useful advice when I applied to YC. But you're comparing a fairly amateur service with possibly the best-designed web site of all time.
Posterous still hasn't beat Tumblr, which is rapidly becoming the most popular blogging service. For all its features, it looks like shit and doesn't have a rich user experience whatsoever.
Facebook, on the other hand, has struck with the force of a goddamn atomic bomb. I must think that the people who criticize Facebook either have small friend circles or have extremely peculiar friend circles, but I've got a diverse bunch of contacts and the one unifying factor is that they use Facebook. Some people use it to hook up, some people use it for class information, some people debate politics on it, some people write long confessionals, some people waste class time, but they all use it and they use it obsessively.
Facebook has become a medium unto itself. As in, my mother will write friends on Facebook instead of calling them. My grandfather will comment on photos. I will create an Event on Facebook rather than calling or emailing people. I will collaborate using a Facebook message.
Facebook's not Twitter because Twitter's designed for minimal communication. Facebook's goal was to create private social worlds; Twitter's goal became a public massing of information. But users on Twitter (not Twitter itself) developed terrific methods of communication, and Facebook's adding them to its arsenal of features.
Guess who is killing Flickr? Facebook. Guess what currently has the best chance of killing part of Youtube's clientele. Facebook (though I wish here I could say Vimeo). My friends send video messages to one another constantly, or record video when nothing's going on. All of my public photos are stored on Facebook, and once it offers public video that's where my videos are going.
Facebook offers one service, and that service is intimacy. It's talking to friends and only friends. If I had to bet on one service surviving every other one online, it would be Facebook. It's the only service I've seen where I can't imagine it being dropped for something else. I thought that within a week when I joined it in 2005, and since then I've seen nothing to convince me otherwise. It is leagues beyond anything.
Please look up the word "osmosis" and how to use it properly. I hate when people use words they don't understand.
FB might get there in revenue, but profit ... not sure