Ryan Sloan

(Or some similarly long and overly dramatic title)

Exciting online news news last week! Facebook launched vanity urls at my favorite price: FREE. (I think there was also a new mobile phone launch or two, I think. Who knows?) Facebook users all over the world anxiously awaited the 12:01am landgrab, refreshing facebook.com/username/ until that magic text box appeared. I opted for facebook.com/ryansloan, but there were some more interesting choices. There was talk earlier this year about the possibility of Facebook monetizing vanity urls, but they opted for the free option instead. Benevolence? Hardly. Granted, they potentially passed up millions of real dollars when they decided to grant them to users free of charge, but I think Zuckerberg & Co. are just looking to the future. No, not the impending robot apocalypse, but a race with Twitter.
Everyone remembers the rumors of an acquisiton deal by Facebook, but it ultimately fell through. Shortly after that, Facebook announced more changes to the home page — they were moving to a live-feed format similar to Twitter. As usual, it was met with some resistance from the user base (surprise surprise) who felt that Facebook should stop “trying to be like Twitter,” and at that point that’s exactly how things seemed: Facebook was trying to be a cheap imitation Twitter with Photos ‘n Stuff ™. Their next move cleared things up a bit: vanity URLs. Vanity URLs enable access to any user’s profile without jumping through all kinds of search-hoops. As of now, if a non-friend visits your vanity URL they are just taken to your summary page. That was expected, after all, Twitter and Facebook have models of “friendship” that are fundamentally different. Twitter’s model is more open, whereas Facebook friendship is a two-way street. I think this is part of the reason that people have reacted so negatively to Facebook’s “imitation Twitter.” Assuming Facebook didn’t alter that model, then Twitter and Facebook could continue to exist as two similar services with different audiences.
The next phase makes the game much more interesting: real-time search of public posts. No longer are you limited to searching your friends, but everyone who chooses to make their status updates public. This brought Facebook into the real-time news ecosystem — one that was previously dominated by Twitter. But that’s not all! Word on the street is, Facebook is ready to make some changes to their privacy system, enabling users to choose privacy settings for each individual item they post. Assuming the interface isn’t a total pain, this is particularly interesting when applied to status updates. If you can make your status updates visible to (and searchable by!) everyone, then the playing field changes dramatically. Combine that with the vanity urls for easy access, and you have more than a “cheap imitation Twitter,” you have the functionality of Twitter (followers, live “news” stream, updates via web, mobile, etc.) with the features, API, and (possibly most importantly) user base of Facebook. Two of the common questions from people reluctant to adopt Twitter are “why would I need a Twitter? Who would follow me anyway?” Given that everyone and their mother (yes, that includes my mother) already has a Facebook, the argument becomes moot. If the users are already signed up, it can’t hurt to give it a shot. Who knows, you might like it.
So is this the end of Twitter? Probably not (not yet, at least) but the game has become much more interesting. Twitter’s recieved some great press lately, but is that enough to save them from their performance and scalability problems? More importantly: Facebook has monetized their product (albeit not very well.) Twitter, on the other hand, has yet to name their price. In the end, cash flow could be an important factor.
Either way, Twitter and Facebook get to share the spotlight for a little while, but can there be only one? What do you think? Is Facebook going after Twitter? Should we seek some sort of consolidated solution, or can the two services live together in harmony?