So by now you probably have heard how Facebook will be rolling a new homepage that will be like the Twitter interface. A attempt to rival them no less, but I just don’t think it is going to happen. Their biggest chance was to try and buy Twitter, but since that didn’t fall through, this attempt won’t put a dent in Twitter and here is why I think so.
For one on every popular service or site, usually one or two shine in that space. For Blogging you have WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger.com. For Social Networks you have Facebook and MySpace. for Microbloggging currently you have Twitter. So far it is one of kind (at least on the scale of what it is) and unique. Sure Facebook has north of a 175 million to Twitter’s 6 million+, but Twitter excels at what it does. Now I’m not saying that the new Facebook feature won’t be successful and people won’t like it (though there might be a backlash as well since there always seems to be some when Facebook changes something), but this won’t compare to Twitter.
The biggest reason for this I think is Twitter’s API. Though many people use Twitter from their website directly, I barely go on there. Through Twitter API, you can use Twitter through applications like TweetDeck. If you are on the go there is a stockpile of apps to do this from. There is SocialScope, Viigo, TwitterBerry, TinyTwitter for your Blackberry, TwitterFon, Tweetie and plenty for your iPhone or iPod Touch. There is Twitroid for the Google Android device the G1. Even if you don’t have a smart phone, there is the SMS text component for regular phones. This is one of the items that I think pushes Twitter’s advantage way over Facebook.
While the Facebook new homepage will probably do a good job mimicking what Twitter has done, I didn’t can’t use it outside of Facebook. Do I really want to be logged into Facebook all day to be able to have that “Twitter” experience or will I just continue using Twitter and be able to be on their site from my desktop browser, from my mobile browser, from Tweetdeck, from SocialScope (the app I used it most on my Blackberry Bold), from TwitterFon from my iPhone. I think the answer is clear and why I think Twitter has nothing to worry from the new Facebook homepage!