Facebook is developing a serious case of Twitter envy. It’s not hard to see how the popularity of Twitter is influencing Facebook’s attempts to remold itself and adapt to the web’s changing social network landscape.
Back when Facebook was first expanding beyond the collegiate market, most people wanted to share thing with select friends — few, if any, would have wanted a way to broadcast their lives to the world. Who would do such a thing?
Then, along came Twitter, and as it turns out, millions of people would do such a thing.
If Facebook wants to avoid taking its place along side Friendster in the dustbin of social networks, the site needs to keep up with Twitter, and that’s exactly what Zuckerberg and company have been doing.
First came the new real-time homepage, which mimics Twitter’s "river of updates" model, and now Facebook is adding ways to make your entire profile public — allowing anyone on the site to see it without the need for a confirmed "friend" relationship.
The idea is retain the walled garden for those that want it, but also create a way to share information with the world at large without requiring that you to be "friends" with everyone on the site.
Now, when you login to Facebook, you’ll see a new privacy page under your account settings where you can now choose to share any of the following with the world: your profile (with sub-settings for Basic Info, Personal Info, Education Info and Work Info), Status Updates, Links, Wall Posts, Photos and Videos.
Of course Facebook isn’t turning into MySpace, while you can set all of the above to "public." In order to see them people still need to be logged in to Facebook — not exactly public. Also bear in mind that, if you like things the way they are, just ignore the new settings — nothing will change without you explicitly opting in.
So why would anyone bother making their profile or updates public? Well, for now, Facebook is spinning the changes as an way to make yourself more discoverable. In other words, when your old friends search for you they’ll be able to find out more about you than just a message saying "you must be friends with this person in order to see their profile."
But the change also lays the groundwork for adding yet another feature borrowed from Twitter — the one-way relationship, or the ability to "follow" someone, as it’s known in Twitter parlance.
While aspects of your Facebook profile can be made public for the rest of the site to see, there’s still no way to get updates from people you aren’t friends with. In other words, if you want to keep up with Lance Armstrong and see his updates in your news feed, you’ll still need to add him as a friend (even if he chooses to make his updates public).
But let’s face it, you and Lance Armstrong aren’t friends, and that’s where Twitter’s follower model has an advantage over Facebook’s "friend" model — following does not require or even imply reciprocal commitments.
Naturally there’s a place for both models and it appears that’s where Facebook is headed. The new privacy controls lay the foundation, now all Facebook needs is to explicitly add the concept of following and "followers."
Only time will tell if such a move save Facebook from the fate of Friendster or MySpace, but it certainly looks like the site is more than willing to change with the internet tides, taking what works from other sites and leaving behind what doesn’t.
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