Neilsen released some startling growth numbers for Twitter today. The burgeoning micro-blogging platform has shot up 1382% over the past year, far surpasing any other social media site they track.
But Twitter’s 7 million additional users aren’t the only one’s who’ve taken to the service over the past year. Facebook has admired the service’s ability to get people to share information about themselves. So much so, in fact, that they offered $500 million in Facebook stock and cash to buy the company last Fall.
In the intervening months, Facebook has released a new website redesign that incorporates Twitter’s familiar micro blogging thought-stream. Turns out it hasn’t been a favorite of Facebook users, if you believe a recent poll conducted by a polling application running on Facebook’s own platform.
Over 700,000 people have already participated, and about 95% are giving the redesign a thumbs down. While there may be a silent majority in favor of the redesign, the sentiment is undeniable.
Facebook’s userbase has never been shy when it comes to critiquing Facebook’s direction. Beacon and a one sentence adjustment to the site’s privacy policy sparked an uprising. However, one of Facebook’s most revolutionary features, news feed, met a great deal of oposition when it was first introduced. Over time users accepted the new feature. The same will happen this time around.
But I don’t think Facebook will attract the same fervor as Twitter. There are still big differences between the two services. Twitter’s basic tenent is as a broadcast platform. The starting assumption is that all content is public and uniformly a maximum of 140 characters. Facebook’s news stream is multi-media and assumed to be limited to your real friends. It’s YouTube vs. Google Video. YouTube makes you famous, Google video was a tool to share videos with friends. Even if Facebook made your stream public, it doesn’t have the concept of “followers” that lets Twitter be a broadcast medium instead of a conversational medium.
