Facebook’s Twitter Obsession Demystified – Reasons For Launch Of Facebook Lite

It seems facebook is in a hurry to make itself a twitter clone. The rumored cold shoulder by twitter to facebook’s acquisition advances and the consequent acquisition of friend feed by facebook all point towards only one thing i.e. Facebook is obsessed with what twitter has today i.e. real time conversations of the world.

Facebook has steadily been making design and feature changes to its site to make it more and more like twitter. The last 2 changes were one with the new design and the other with the real time updating of the mini feed. Now with friend feed in the bag facebook has beta launched Facebook lite which by all means is a twitter clone (it is exactly like pownce which was run by Kevin Rose of digg fame and was later sold to Six Apart).

Check Screenshot Below

Whats So Facinating In Twitter?

1. The art of conversation - Seemless conversations flow and ease of updating one’s status is a key driver.
2. Mobile friendly – The open api of twitter and the innumerable twitter clients make it anytime anywhere usable.
3. No Need For Friendship! - Twitter isnt about friendship so you may not know know someone but may still follow them because their updates are interesting

Reason for Facebook’s Twitter Obsession And Facebook Lite Launch?

Facebook has  a simple goal – Ownership of the social graph of all users on the web. Now with twitter there this goal looks blurry as twitter is as social as anything could be. Facebook quickly realised this fact and possibly tried to buy twitter. Facebook also realised that twitter’s simplicity was its biggest strength and the fact that its open api allowed developers to make more complex apps for advanced users did the trick. Facebook itself on the other hand came with the baggage of too many apps and its developer platform cluttering the user experience. This led to facebook’s roadmap to being slimmer and simpler and conversational.. In short being more twitter like!