I consider Facebook to be a form of entertainment for me. I love finding out about my friends’ lives through their pictures, 25 Things notes and their Wall messages. Most of all, I love their status messages. I’ve gotten to the point where my life just feels empty without a constant stream of status messages. Heck. It’s so bad I don’t want a stream, I want a river of status updates. I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way and so, it seems to be that Facebook’s latest update is a massive failure and could be the catalyst for people to “break up” with Facebook, as one of my FB friends put it. She’s taken up with Twitter.
Something has happened in the past 30-60 days. All of a sudden Twitter has reached Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” and everyone is talking about it and (re)joining it. And you know what’s on Twitter? Status updates. There are no updates about quizzes my friends have taken which suggest they should live in “the country,” as if that’s a real place. I don’t get 20 updates about friends giving their friends turkeys or an additional 15 updates asking whether a friend’s friend will make a good friend. Instead, on Twitter I get a pure, unadulterated stream of status messages and the more friends I have on Twitter the stronger the current of the stream. Heck between Jimmy Fallon and ?uestlove, I’ve got a pretty good flow already.
Normally, I’d wonder if I’m the only one. Thanks to the New Layout Vote application on Facebook, I don’t have to wonder. As of this writing, there are 1,106,757 votes against the new FB layout (vs 70,074 for it). On top of that, there are 612,545 comments – most of which seem to be against the layout.
In Facebook’s effort to improve the site for marketers, which is all that seems to have taken place, they’ve made it more difficult for users to get the information they need – a critical faux pas. They’ve also created an awesome opportunity for Twitter.
I’m interested in seeing how this plays out. Right now, I’ve got to go update my status — on Twitter.
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