On the topic of social media platform of choice, some interesting news came out recently from your favorite Palo Alto-based social networking site – Facebook. In short, get ready for some pretty radical changes to Facebook’s homepage – something that 
may irk the tweeple of Twitterland.
To summarize, Facebook is focusing on 3 elements: Filters, Stream and Publisher. Filters help you manage the thousands of friend updates (you’re so popular), stream organizes the content in a way that is easy to engage with (de-tag photos from last weekend), and publisher gives you the power to share content yourself (serious stuff – like videos of your friends winning a dodgeball championship). In itself, this is important for online social networking as a whole, but some more specific updates have major ramifications for brands and PR:
- No more limit on friends. Where in the past you were capped at 5,000, you now have the freedom to be like @The_Real_Shaq (second Shaq on Twitter reference on BiteMarks, for those of you scoring at home) and have over 200,000 of your dearest fans watching your updates. This means brands can now truly reach the masses on Facebook, just like Twitter.
- Real-Time updates. Status updates used to be updated every 10 minutes or so. But, because of Twitter’s unique real-time access, it had a significant edge over Facebook in terms of actual engagement. Showing the ability to adapt, Facebook has now bridged that gap.
- Profile pages are standardized. Brands that used to build up huge followings on fan pages – with limited ability to interact – are now treated the same as you and me. The same features are going to exist across all pages, which encourages sharing content in a way that isn’t restricted. Facebook is making a concerted effort to give a brand or public figure the opportunity to have a more “personal presence.” Use this power wisely.
- So long status updates. Twitter’s main advantage over Facebook has always been its ability to truly offer a microblogging platform. Now that Facebook scrapped the status update and asks “what’s on your mind,” it lets you express that with photos, videos and links – not just text – offering yet another way that brands can raise their Facebook presence and provide consumers with more engaging content.
It’s unclear at this point exactly how these changes will impact the Facebook vs. Twitter dynamic, but in a perfect world they would continue to complement each other. If there is anything to be optimistic about, it’s that a growing number of brands have emerged on Twitter as exceptional sources for information and insight people want – and hopefully these changes will drive a similar growth on Facebook.
On the other hand, the worst thing that could happen is users start picking sides. Can’t we all just be friends? Wait, or is it followers?
(Photo Courtesy of TechCrunch)
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