Facebook And Twitter Are Mingling

The two largest social networks are becoming more similar, as they borrow each other's features, and search for profit. Facebook and Twitter were different places to socialize online. One was public to the world, the other (mostly) just between friends.

One was a place for news from your social circle, the other more about public events and discussion. One was dominated by images and multimedia, the other text-centred

Over the past year those distinctions have broken down. In their rush to compete and make more money, Facebook and Twitter  are converging on the same set of features.

Facebook’s recent bites from Twitter are obvious. It introduced a new “public feed” that compiles all public posts, similar to Twitter’s feed. Last month Facebook began highlighting “trending” topics to its users, as Twitter has long done. That feature was built on top of another feature new to Facebook but originating with Twitter, that of hashtags people use to label their comments with particular topics. Sources say Facebook also has staff who court celebrities and help them build followings on the site, an attempt to combat the fact Twitter has become the default place for public figures and their fans to connect.

Going the other way, Twitter recently introduced a redesign of how conversations are displayed. Abandoning its commitment to showing everything in reverse chronological order, in favor of the chronological convention (which Facebook adopts). Last year Twitter introduced a method called "cards"  that prominently display text, images, video,ads or other media linked to in a tweet and sidestep Twitter’s 140 character limit on posts. Twitter’s cards look and behave similarly to the way Facebook embeds media and ads in its feed. Most recently, this week Twitter purchased mobile ad company MoPub, likely to combat Facebook’s progress in mobile advertising.

Facebook and Twitter’s collision course seems more driven by their rush to make money from ads than an effort to fulfill the needs of their  users.

It could help their smaller competitors, though.

The dominant sites merging into one similar, ad-dominated mass leaves more space for them to innovate, and could make people more willing to try out different ideas about socializing over the Internet.

We are definitely watching, their competitors too.