Social.icio.us Thursday: Facebook Enhancements Continue to Try to Kill Twitter

Posted by Micheline Sabatté, Product Marketing Manager, Performance Media

Yesterday’s Silicon Alley Insider “Facebook's Twitter-Killing iPhone App Revealed!” post by Nicholas Carlson does a wonderful job summarizing the strategic steps Facebook has taken in an effort to bring down social media rival and everyone’s favorite micro-blogging service, Twitter. The article focused on the new Facebook iPhone app that will improve the user experience of Facebook on mobile devices, namely the popular iPhone.

In addition, Facebook’s product enhancements over the past year have included:

• Redesigned interface with tabbed profile and pages design
• Redesigned (and then redesigned again) home page
• Following companies like friends
• Vanity URL’s (www.facebook.com/yourname)
• Making status updates visible to everyone, not just your friends
• Allowing users to make unlimited connections
• Real-time updates (focus on the “stream” / “news feed”)
• Real-time search
• Live event coverage
• Promoting celebrities and becoming fans of celebrities
• SMS-enabled updates

More recently, Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed as reported by TechCrunch will likely mean additional platform enhancements now powered by an impressive talent pool that will work towards revolutionizing the way we share information on the social Web and how we connect with friends in an increasingly digital world.

What does this mean for Twitter? As Facebook forges ahead to clone the features that make Twitter so popular with users, users may realize the benefit of having all their information and friends connected in one place (or one platform) rather than in many places. Only time will tell whether this vision becomes a reality or whether a new player enters the market to derail the strategy. But one thing is for sure, the battle is not over. Twitter will certainly put up a fight despite criticism of Twitter Quitters and pointless babble.