Facebook the New Twitter? Nawwwww

There was a presentation last week in class on the infrastructure behind social media. I found this article rather suiting as it indirectly focused on the infrastructures behind Twitter and Facebook. As many of you have noticed, Facebook made some changes to their home page. These changes aren’t just visual - much has to do with their function. These changes are,

“meant to change how Facebook users share and follow information, creating a new home page that will show users what their networks have been up to and make those exchanges more current -- news-feeds will now update in near real time, vs. every 10 minutes.”

Wow. Talk about trying to mimic Twitter. As it turns out, this exactly what they’re trying to do, and no wonder, since news about Twitter has been abuzz lately.

“The moves are a "concerted response to the rise of Twitter as a real-time message broadcasting system that goes beyond members' personal circle of friends," wrote Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch. "Facebook doesn't want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans."”

So the question is:

Will it work?

Firstly, I think anything that Facebook changes to real-time will be of benefit to them. The internet has always been about immediacy, and just as the universe will always expand, the net will get faster and faster. Social media has followed a similar pattern. If one accepts this claim then it follows that what Facebook did was adhere to a most basic function of the internet.

Although Facebook has made their site more functional by coming close to capturing the purpose of Twitter, I don’t think it will do significant harm to Twitter. The Infrastructure of Twitter is built upon a very simple notion - sharing what you’re doing with others. A result of this sharing of activity comes the sharing of self with others. Facebook, on the other hand, is firstly about sharing yourself - what you’re doing comes as a result of this. If Facebook aims to capture Twitter’s audience then I think they might be jeopardizing the focus of their site.

For example, Facebook is centralized on the internet, while Twitter expands over other mediums. Although Facebook allows people access from smart phones, Twitter can work on even the most basic phones, as its all about the 140 line question "what are you doing." Because of this, Twitter never needs to be compressed. Facebook always loses value as it shrinks to smaller mediums.

What do you think?

Wild Wild Facebook

It has been a crazy week in the world of Facebook. First they release a new Terms of Service only to switch back to the old TOS after they faced a barrage of criticism over them. Then a story broke about how the relatives of dead people aren’t allowed to have their dead relatives Facebook profiles taken down. After being sent an e-mail regarding the removal of a dead person’s page, the privacy department of Facebook responded,

“Per our policy for deceased users, we have memorialized this person's account. This removes certain more sensitive information and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or find the person in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.”

Although I agree with the policy and think that, in most cases, it is generally good - friends can grieve by posting on the wall, the profile acts as an account of their life that will live on for friends and family to see - it’s the insensitivity of Facebook that makes a chill run down my spine. No matter the privacy statement, never is it completely all encompassing. In such a situation like this, when a relative can’t view the page because they are not yet friends and when the daughters don’t like having to look at a thumbnail picture of their dead father, Facebook should circumvent their default regulations and bring a little humanity back to a world awash with faceless corporations.

I think this particular situation is only the spear-point of a general trend towards internet sites becoming so awash with problems because of their size and their importance to the daily lives of so many people that they have to refer to corporate default positions that lack even a flicker of humanity.

My thoughts are echoed over at TechCrunch on an article about the recent Facebook TOS controversy.

is thinking about a title about status updates

As I stumbled this afternoon I came across this interesting piece from Mark Hendrickson over at TechCrunch. He attempts to dismantle the claim that Facebook is trying to stomp out Twitter - which has come to light recently in a few other blog-posts (here and here) after Facebook made changes to further open up their platform for third-party applications. His argument is as follows:

“Facebook fails to challenge Twitter with this new platform upgrade because the two companies ultimately serve substantially different behavioral paradigms.”

A very interesting proposition, he premises this with:

“While Twitter and Facebook prompt users with eerily similar questions — Twitter asks “What are you doing?” and Facebook asks “What are you doing right now?” — their users don’t answer in the same way. By and large, Facebook users answer the question more faithfully than Twitter users. They actually provide information about what they’re currently doing,..Meanwhile, Twitter users have (by and large) decided to ignore the questioned posed for them. Instead of using the service to post real status updates — i.e. descriptions of what they’re currently doing — they use it as a public broadcasting system of sorts. It’s an efficient way for them to send out thought trinkets to an often ambiguous crowd of friends and strangers.”

From what I’ve experienced on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve come across the opposite. Both Twitter and Facebook users use the update system to post trinkets of thought more often than what they’re doing. In fact, I’ve noticed people on Twitter tweeting about what they’re currently doing more than about what’s on their mind. Now my argument is only from personal experience, but so is Hendrickson’s. Without any statistics both of our arguments have the same truth claims. So I present to you my friend’s Facebook Status’s for the past 2 hours:

is job hunting tomorrow... whatever, i didn't like it
is little wayneee little waynee little waynneeeeee.
had an amazing weekend. cannot wait for reading week!
dosen't like calculus right now.
burned 12 wheelbarrows of leaves today... and only 30% of the yard done. Whew!
Damn you Google Chrome for being such a RAM whore...we had so much potential.
is blink.
Radiohead definitely in my top 5 bands of all time. Yup!
is sleeping way too much.
is lovin the strep throat. nahht.
apparently needs to be more depressed. what? ahaha.
is listening to PandaBass in the mix.
is on a boat motherfucker and don't you forget.
is playing madden 09...of course lol.
is excited she doesn't have to smell french fries until friday. good times.
is glad there's someone constantly pushing and challenging me to be better. It's more work, but I'm better for it . )
___...No Matter What, Die Trying...___.
keeps falling down.
very impressed with Chancellor Merkel, for once.
is performing an exorcism on his dog at midnight.
There is no substance to this content.
¨her biggest strength is her lack of weakness¨ ahhahaaha...
wishes he were home with family.
is spending forever making this one stupid handout. That's my great idea for you...
is waiting for GE to come over, and is then working from 10-12! lame!

I counted 11 updates about what the person is doing, did, or will do, and I counted 13 updates that were just thoughts or quotes.

From this small and rather insignificant study we can see that the ratio between updating about what one is doing and updating about what one is thinking is similar, if not almost exact.

But I’m still slightly right about seeing more updates about what people are thinking : )