Facebook’s Twitter-mania (or phobia) – @User tags and Facebook Lite
Facebook does not seem to get over of its Twitter-mania (or phobia).
First they made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Twitter for $500 million, then they re-designed the site to make the content more sharable and put more stress on “What’s on your mind?” status messages, made sharing external links easier; and now we have the new feature on Facebook which allows user to tag their friends (or groups or fan-pages) with a Twitter-like @ symbol in their status updates. The @<username> identity of Twitter users is fast becoming a part of standard online coordinate of netizens. This @<username> has been the popular way of replying to tweets and linking to profile pages over Twitter, and it works exactly the same on Facebook as well.
@User Tagging on Facebook
Also, last week Facebook started testing in US and India it’s much talked lighter version named as “Facebook Lite” – a sleek, clean and lighter version of Facebook. Although Facebook officially says Facebook Lite is for users with slower internet connections, and NOT a competition for Twitter, one look at Facebook Lite page tells you the entire story. Here are the screen-shots:
Facebook Lite Screen Shot
Facebook Lite Screen Shot
The “What’s on your mind?” status update box makes way for a still bigger and simpler “Write” status update box. Prominently missing are all the applications and quizzes. The page reminds users of the earlier days of Facebook when all the quizzes and other application updates would not clutter your Facebook home-page. Stress is clearly more on status updates and wall-posts; and though not explicitly, but Facebook seems to be trying to drive Twitter-like status updates and conversations through this Lite page. It would be interesting to see how users will react to Facebook Lite with no applications and quizzes; and how heavy this Lite page becomes if ever Facebook decides to put applications on it.
Is Facebook really trying to woo users with slower internet connections, or is this another of Facebook’s attempts to get deeper in Twitter’s domain – What do you think?
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After acquiring FriendFeed, I don’t think facebook needs to “copy” any twitter features. Twitter was the one who ripped everything off FriendFeed once.
Coming to facebook lite, I think it’s a brilliant move by facebook to woo people with slower internet connections (really). Facebook lite has a very clean interface and does a lot more than twitter. You have events, wall posts, even videos, the ability to “like”, ads and of course, “status updates”. Twitter has just a small subset of even facebook lite’s functionality.
But then, it’s the simplicity of twitter that drives users to it, rather than the feature-packedness
Well Digg wasn’t the first one to introduce “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down”…still they put the ranking stuff in a way that it was easy to use and viral. Now most of the “social” websites have such a feature. So why blame Facebook?
Which was the first one to introduce the “Thumbs up” thing then?
@Ashish Sinha (pluggd.in): Are you moderating comments for some of your threads? I had written one for your sprinkr post here: http://www.pluggd.in/email-marketing-business-in-india-297/ , but it never got published. Seems like you’re saving some reputation of sprinklr guys by moderating comments!
Anyway, I’m writing the comments here. If you can, publish in the proper place.
Hey Manjunath,
Thanks for replying. I agree with whatever you have said. But currently, the email scenario is far from perfect. 80% of all email generated is spam (will give you a reference, if you so require). Where do you think those emails are originated from? My point is, most of the email marketing business is black-hat. And it will not sustain as a business if it is only “opt-in”. How many percentage of email users actually go and subscribe to particular websites for receiving newsletters? My guess is <1%.
If people are genuinely interested in reading the latest stuff going on in a company, they would subscribe to RSS. I have first hand email marketing experience, and I have seen people buying lacs of email ids (on CDs), and targeting Software Engineers in Bangalore. The amount and quality of data collected by email marketers is awesome. At their wish they can spam any particular segment in any city even in India (which is considered to be not so internet savvy).
Now I cannot agree that all these lacs of users have opted in to get their emails sold to email marketers.
And if you really are into white hat marketing, can you give details of how do you acquire email ids of people to be in business? If you get all the emails from your clients, then what is the point of going to a specific Indian business, rather than use email blaster, or set up an SMTP on Amazon's S3?
And do you filter any email ids that you get to check whether they have opted in, or just blindly start sending emails?
Do not make an ass of yours with assumptions. All of your earlier comments landed in the spam section (ask akismet).
Hehe… when the comment contained so many occurrences of the word “spam”, it was naturally headed towards the spam section
Thanks for taking them online though, and apologies for incorrect assumptions.
Peace!