Tags : Facebook, friendfeed, social media, social networks, Twitter
Facebook proves how lame it is – steals from Twitter and FriendFeed
Before we go any further I should make something clear – just in case you haven’t figured it out by now – I am not a fan of Facebook. I don’t agree with its terms of service which gives them total ownership over anything I do while I am there. I don’t like some of the moves that they have; or are rumoured to be looking at, to monetize the social media behemoth. Unfortunately though in my line of work Facebook is a necessary evil but one I use as little as possible.
That said I am really beginning to think that this behemoth could be in trouble. How else does that explain its recent moves to open up its status API in order to compete against Twitter and then the announcement that they were adding a direct rip-off of FriendFeed’s ‘Like’ feature. Years into a business and Facebook still has to figure out how it is going to make the serious money it needs in order to live up to the bullshit valuation figure that the VC market says it is worth. Its one foray into advertising using the Beacon program proved to be a dismal failure and it is still chewing through money with no idea of how to live up to expectations.
So what do they do?
They go hunting for the features that are making Twitter and FriendFeed popular and copy them. Some might like to suggest that mimicry is the next best thing to flattery but in this case I think it smacks more of desperation as Facebook is trying to do whatever it can to maim potential rivals for any part of its services. Sure Facebook might have the numbers of users on their side but each and everyone of those users is costing them money – money that they don’t seem to be able to figure out how to capitalize on.
Stealing ideas though is no way to do it though – it only shows how lame you are.
[hat tip - belatedly - to Kyle Brady ]
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