Every day it seems Facebook wants to be more like Twitter. But Twitter is content to be just itself… for now. Yesterday, Facebook made two announcements, both strikes across the bow of the 140-character phenom. And both made in the typical Facebook way: laid back, casual, innocent looking blog posts.
But make no mistake. These are small updates that reflect a strategic goal of Facebook’s to slow Twitter, and find the next big growth engine.
The first addition is the ability to “tag” friends in your status updates. Yes, just like Twitter, you can type a “@” followed by a person’s name to include them in your update, which according to Tom Occhino from Facebook is “another way to let people know who and what you’re talking about.”
Oddly when I tried the new feature this morning I could not get it to work. Perhaps it’s rolling out to users in waves. Still it seems 6,231 people “like” it so far.
With Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed you can be that more Twitter-like features will continue to be added. That Twitter is rumored to be valued around $1.7-$2B making it the fourth largest social networking site (following MySpace and Bebo) is not lost on management. How to tap into the juice?
