The obvious thing the entirety of the social tech world is missing is that we already have the perfect social networking system(s) – email and instant messaging. Conversations and presence in someone’s address book is the same as a reciprocal friending on Facebook and MySpace. IM status messages do the same things as Twitter. Email is also the data most social services use as identification when you are looking for a user.
[12:15] rzklkng: Solution in search of a problem.
[12:16] rzklkng: When it first came out, it was supposed to be a status update for people, as in ‘what are you doing’.
[12:16] rzklkng: Then people started having conversations with each other, changing its use.
[12:16] rzklkng: That’s why they
[12:16] rzklkng: they’ve had such service problems. It is being used outside of it’s design.
[12:17] rzklkng: It’s also why Facebook pushed the front page redesign to showcase status updates.
[12:17] rzklkng: Twitter is a one-to-many app, for celebrities, pundits, and products to push messages. Facebook is many-to-many, although they will use “Pages” the same as Twitter for brands.
[12:18] rzklkng: Brands can then “buy” business accounts for messaging and advertising.
[12:18] rzklkng: That’s what they were afraid of with Twitter. Twitter was getting pumped up in the press a couple months ago, but it’s still worthless.
[12:18] rzklkng: They have 2m users.
[12:18] rzklkng: FB has 150m.
[12:20] rzklkng: Let’s assume only 75m of those are active users. 10% of the online population updates their statuses somewhere. Like how people use twitter.
[12:20] rzklkng: That’s already 7.5m. More than 3x Twitters entire population.
[12:20] rzklkng: For advertising, FB should smoke Twitter, except that Twitter is now more buzzworthy.
[12:21] rzklkng: Twitter just doesn’t have the reach.
