As the saying goes “If you cant conquer them, join them”. This is exactly what Facebook is planning to do by enabling its users to directly post their status updates to Twitter from their Facebook profiles.
According to Techcrunch:
At some point this week, Facebook will roll out the ability to send your status updates to its rival, Twitter, we’ve confirmed. This will be built-in directly to its UI and not through some separate app you have to install, we’re told. It will be similar to the functionality it rolled out for its Pages feature in August, but this will be available on all profiles.
Details of the MoveAs is evident from the tweets of Facebook employees, the feature is already being tested by Facebook internally. The recent launch of a URL shortner by Facebook might be a piece of this puzzle too, whereby Facebook would want updates posted on twitter to be shortened via its own url shortener fb.me.
Similar to Facebook, MySpace also recently teamed up with Twitter. However unlike MySpace, Facebook’s feature wont be a two way bond and twitter users wont be able to publish their tweets to Facebook directly. They still would have to rely on third-party apps to get this done.
Possible Rationale Behind The MoveFacebook already has a twitter app that lets users post their status updates to twitter, since ages. Similarly their is no dearth of third-party services and tools that provides this functionality. However, only a small fraction of user population that uses both facebook and twitter cross post to both sites.
MG Siegler thinks that this is a move to use Twitter as a platform to drive more traffic back to Facebook. Or just make Facebook the preferred third-party tool to send updates to Twitter.
Eric Eldon from InsideFacebook weighs in and suggests that this new feature is an acknowledgement of the current value of Twitter as a public broadcast service; but, the feature could be a way for Facebook to co-opt this value.
We think that with this move Facebook wants to train or accustom their users to start tweeting, that is use Facebook to post status updates as well. It is very hard to change the mentality of the user base, and get them to use a service in a way that was not initially envisioned. Facebook users think of Facebook as a social network, and when they have to post status updates, they go to Twitter. Once on twitter, majority of the people already use some sort of an app to post tweets. By becoming such an app, Facebook users would be able to use Facebook for tweeting i.e. status updates. Once that is accomplished, Facebook could already out-tweet Twitter, since Facebook has such a huge user base of 350 million people.
So the would go on as, “If you cant conquer them, join them and then make them redundant”.
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