Call it coincidence, but in the last few days, I have read two detailed interviews of the founders of two of the most talked about services these days- Facebook and Twitter. Coincidence, because my last post ended exactly there – the future of Facebook and Twitter in light of the impending Google Wave.
Inside Facebook had an interview with Mark Zuckerberg a few days back on his plans and the direction which Facebook would want to take. It starts off with how Facebook’s profiles are based on real identities and that has been at the core of Facebook’s activities, the Newsfeed, the developer community built around the Facebook Platform, and the more recent Facebook Connect. He points out how real identities drives communication, siting examples of how mail on FB is used a lot since people need not remember someone’s mail id. He discusses the rise of content creation – specifically photo sharing. (where Facebook is speeding ahead of competition) On another front, Facebook is also testing out a payment service, which if aligned with Connect, can be useful outside FB too. While on currency, he clarified that FB aims to be cash flow positive next year.While he expects music, location based services and travel to be the main verticals, he says that gaming has been the surprise package.
Search Engine Land’s talk with Biz Stone on Twitter was also a very interesting read, thanks to references to the repositioning of Twitter, as a sharing and discovery service, aided by the ability to form groups, a redesigned homepage. He also discusses the importance of real-time search and the ballooning of rumours that happens on Twitter. While on the subject of the recent change to the @replies sharing, he talked about creating ‘playlists’ of people that can then be shared.He also spoke about the importance of SMS and how Twitter can be made more useful to beginners – “what do you want to find out” instead of “what are you doing?”. Meanwhile, in a panel discussion in New York, Twitter exec Jack Dorsey commented that he wanted twitter to be as ubiquitous as SMS, but obviously much more advanced and useful than that. I also saw a very useful article recently that discusses the 10 ways Twitter will change US business, which include hyper local marketing, measurement of other media, replacing message boards for stock/financial discussions, democratisation of media, data mining, news alerts, micro payments, effect on telecom companies and governmental agencies, and fund raising. But there’s something about Twitter that goes beyond all this, maybe I am a bit biased, but check out this excellent read on the subject.
Now in this context, let’s take a look at Wave. If Google is able to sync existing high profile properties like You Tube, Blogger, Picasa, News, Calendar, Latitude, Orkut and even say Knol and Reader, a lot of the advantages of Facebook that pertain to real profiles might cease to be huge advantages, since my connections on Google are usually people I already know – real people, so to speak. The other point is that all these services have quite huge crowds on their own, and sets of crowds that use combinations of these services. It remains to be seen whether Google finds it worthwhile to provide integration options on Wave, and then top it with real time conversations, and the ability to create portable waves. The consolation for FB is that so far, Google has not been able to do any breathtaking synergy exercises.
Twitter seems to be moving towards harnessing the power of crowds to help people find what they’re looking for. Twitter’s dual strengths, IMHO, are still its simplicity, that allows it to be used for a variety of purposes, and the army of developers who create apps that actually transform these concepts into usable tools. The overlap of my Twitter crowd and Gtalk (and so possibly Wave, when that happens) is in decimal percentages, but if Wave can use its ‘openness’ to connect friends of friends..to a few degrees, that advantage might be lost sooner than later. Wave might also be able to replicate the real time advantages and the ease of use that makes twitter so useful. To be noted that twitter is working on Verified Accounts.
I’d say that both Facebook and Twitter have to work harder and faster if they’ve to offset the effects of Wave. They will obviously not disappear overnight, but users might actually question the ‘utility’ of being on the networks. On its part, Google’s success with Wave will all depend a lot on how they manage to integrate their services, and the kind of apps that the developer community manages to bring out.
until next time, the changing status quo? 😉