DISQUS

DaveMc · 9 months ago

Andrew, my first thought as well. The wall message is more like an @reply, though, in that if Person A writes on Person B's wall, that message appears in my feed if and only if I'm friends with both Person A and Person B, exactly like in Twitter. On the other hand, I don't think twitter has an exact counterpart to the Facebook 'comment', as there is no way I can send anything that can be seen by all of your twitter followers.

Also, I'm not quite sure there is a standard twitter user, yet. My sister's husband has about 1000 followers in a loose social group around Windows programming. More serious/work-related than facebook, but not impersonal.

erlichson · 9 months ago

you make a good point. i think twitter will evolve much like blogging. most blogs have very few readers, and most twitterers will have a handful of followers. in the world of blogging, there are personal blogs, but few of them have any significant number of readers. the big blogs cover topics interesting to a larger, if still niche-focused, audience. Twitter will evolve the same way. A long tail of personal twitterers and small minority of twitterers who serve the mass majority. Either way, I think twitter looks much more like a blogging phenom then what drives facebook, which is about staying in touch personally with people you know and like.

TS Low · 8 months ago

Reality is that facebook makes no money and has not been able to figure out how to do so. Advertising revenues are not what they once were (and are unlikely to rise much in the future), and the company is chewing up capital at an extraordinary, unsustainable rate.

So for facebook, this is about momentum and justification. Both facebook and twitter are nuts because they have free models. Don't follow the tech; follow the money.

Didn't we learn anything during the dotcom bust?

erlichson · 8 months ago

google had no business model early on (well, they thought it was going to be selling search appliances to companies), just consumer adoption. youtube was in a similar situation. seems unlikely to me that facebook can't parlay the amount of user attention they have into a profitable business.I dont see a lot of proxies for companies that have the the level of adoption that facebook has that did not find a model, provided their costs were not crazy. twitter has a very small team (under 50). they will do fine.

Kurt Sanders · 8 months ago

I agree with you, Twitter caught a HUGE break on the news because of simplicity and the catchy name. Kids love to say less and using the SMS upload to a wide audience appeals to them as well as politicians (who in my mind are still teenagers). To see the news anchors also Twitter is just insane, they are a mindless set of talkers desiring a public.

Facebook is more robust and has the security controls I desire in a social networking system. Having FAcebook blink and chase Twitter was a bad idea and looks like Twitter envy. My family and friends are not pleased with the changes in Facebook and I predict that they will follow Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL which I used if they don't watch out for their loyal customers. Twitter will not be where I go, but I detect a small opening for a new web company to emerge.

jerryclatham28 · 6 months ago

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Slingshot RPM · 3 months ago

FAcebook and Twitter is very different, I prefer Facebook because it caters photos and videos. If your a photographer you can showcase you shoots in there, unlike Twitter.