Posted on March 19, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Stick To What You Do Best: Facebook and the Writing on the Wall

Facebook deciding to copy Twitter is a sign the social media giant is in trouble of tripping over itself.

When it comes to life-casting, sharing information and networking, my first experience of social media was with Live Journal. I was on there regularly from 2001 until 2005, when I discovered Myspace (before all the tweens did). I kept using LJ, but noticed as Myspace began being adopted by everyone, LJ was changing it’s features to look more like Myspace. Myspace inevitably did the same thing the following year as a bunch of the literate types exodused for the less-cluttered, more aesthetic Facebook. Myspace tried to clean up its profiles and added a bunch of features to copycat Facebook, but it was too late. The writing on the wall for any social media site is when it looks behind at the competitor and gives up its edge to conform to competition.

With that said, it should be no surprise that as Twitter’s star rises, Facebook would get worried. Facebook already tried to buy out Twitter: Facebook’s Thiel Explains Failed Twitter Takeover – BusinessWeek. When that didn’t work, Facebook decided it would copy Twitter, saying that real-time streams were the future of social media. Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, it’s only ONE road to take in that bright new shiny future and 95% of us doubt that it’s the right road for Facebook to take.

The ensuing smack down…

Facebook, last fall, became the number one site for photo-sharing on the web: Facebook Trumps Most Photo Sharing Sites With 10 Billion Photos outpacing established favorites like Flikr and Photobucket, and leaving Myspace in the dust. Facebook’s flare for sharing photos, planning events and running apps are things that Twitter will never be able to compete with. Facebook was dominating all other social media in that respect, with its incredibly user intutive interface and variety of ways to keep in touch with people. Up until last week, as Twitter obsessed as I am, I used Facebook just as much because it provided things that Twitter never can.

On top of the service Facebook provides that Twitter can’t, I’ll say this: Twitter is NOT user-intuitive. I just wrote an article on how to get started and do well on Twitter. Invaluable resources, but come on! Who needs all that research to get started and succeed on Facebook? If you can email, you can use Facebook after an hour of looking around. It’s not difficult, and maybe that’s why everyone and their grandmothers have joined up.

So why, with that said, would Facebook get so hot and bothered by real-time streams? It’s the number one photo host. Facebook events kick E-vite in the face. Why isn’t there room for both Facebook and Twitter? Sadly, those things aren’t getting mulled over by the powers that be over at Facebook HQ. Their redesign that emulates Twitter is not just cluttered, ineffective and confusing; it’s also sad, pathetic and the writing on the wall.

Everytime I’ve seen a social media giant look over it’s shoulder and stoop down to where an upstart is, it’s about to go down. Facebook should have concentrated on enhancing the areas it can offer people that Twitter never will (and in Facebook’s defense, it did a great job by fixing up fan pages, offering a ton of new tricks for businesses, politicians and celebrities to host content and interact with fans). Facebook should have kept it’s former design and focused on how different it is, underscoring “Why would you use Twitter? You can’t find your friends events and photos there! That’s Facebook!”

Since the redesign I’ve seen two events in my uber-cluttered stream, and I wasn’t invited to either of them. A friend of a friend was, and she’d RSVP’d to a wedding I’d never heard of. Since the redesign I don’t see many shared photos, but now I am inundated with all the quizzes people are taking and have no way, without blocking the person taking them, to edit that content. I’ve stopped using it by almost 90%. I have been “Twitterpated” for some time now, but never wanted to switch. Facebook, sadly, has forced an exodus and I’m not the only one who feels this way: Nerdfight: The Facebook Faithful Turn Against Mark Zuckerberg’s Redesign

Apparently, business partners and relatives of Facebook bosses are using Twitter more as a result of the redesign. In fact, Twitter is up 1,382 percent. Could Facebook surpass Google? Not with Twitter around | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com, this article not only compares the numbers of the social media sites, but lists the redesign as part of the uptick.

What will be done? There is no shortage of articles out there right now ripping into Zuckerberg and Facebook for yet another heavy-handed change forced on their users: Debacles: What Was Mark Zuckerberg Smoking When He Redesigned Facebook? and Chris Willman: Facebook’s Lousy Facelift are just two of hundreds of articles out there if you Google “facebook redesign“. Will Facebook listen to the outcry, as they did when they recanted on their Terms of Service change? Or will this be like last Fall’s redesign?

For them, hopefully it will be the former, not the latter. The writing is on the wall: copy your competitor at your peril. That’s a maxim for almost every area in life. If you’re not courageous and unique enough to be defined by what makes you different, you’re probably not going to last. In anything. The problem with getting last Fall’s redesign to change was that it was just different; it really didn’t make things worse. We all adapted, and they saw no numbers in the data to prove that the redesign wasn’t working.

Apart from some user-based polling on Facebook (Facebook Polls Users On Redesign. 94% Hate It. – washingtonpost.com), will we see any data on people using Facebook less? I’d honestly hope that people who take the time to complain about the redesign will actually use it less, explore Twitter, get a free wordpress account or a Tumblr account and make due for a couple weeks off of Facebook. MAYBE, if that happens, we’ll see Facebook forced not only by popular sentiment, but more importantly by the data, to go back to a more efficient design.

So will Facebook choose to stay in this obviously Twitter inspired look or go back to a more intuitive format, nix the stream and concentrate on the areas where Twitter dare not tread? We’ll see… but until then, you can find me here or on Twitter.