There’s two problems with facebook copying twitter’s design:
1. (what I call the) Mental bandwidth of facebook users; and
2. different content types
Twitter users are used to a stream of data, not trying to see everything but seeing what’s happening in real time. Facebook users don’t want to see everything their friends are doing, just the important things. This is the whole “signal vs noise” problem.
Facebook had been doing a great job of sharing with me what I might think is relevant, but now they’ve dropped relevance for strictly most recent.
Also, twitter has one data type: status messages. Facebook has statuses, photos, videos, links, events… each type is different in importance and how often they are created.
I’m more interested in photos than status updates because photos aren’t put up as often. I’m more interested in an event 5 of my friends are going to in a few days rather than an event someone created today that’s happening two weeks from now.
You’re right, we only need one twitter.
Bill Erickson is a WordPress Consultant who builds custom websites using WordPress as a CMS and Thesis or Genesis as a framework. He’s a cofounder and resident of The Creative Space, and a cofounder of the BIL Conference (the open analog to the TED Conference).
