Blatant copying of Facebook is the future of Twitter, surely not..

Remember when Facebook introduced embeddable posts? It was not the most overwhelming of updates, mainly because we’d seen it before. Tweets have been embedded into blog posts long before Facebook got in on the action, it was a bit like Ford announcing that all cars will now come with a CD player.

It was all part of Facebook’s grand plan though. They’ve achieved the position of being the world’s go to social network for a few years now, despite the odd threat of a wobble, they still hold this title. The way they maintain this is by offering a bit of everything, not leading the pack in innovation, but not falling to far behind either. Since we all got addicted to Facebook, specialist services like Snapchat and Soundcloud have popped up. Instead of trying to compete with these on their own turf, Facebook just copies elements and makes it easy for users to integrate between it and other networks.

Facebook is still the number one provider of online identity. When signing up to Soundcloud for the first time, most people with just lazily click ‘Sign In With Facebook’.

Taking embedded posts was an attempt to emulate Twitter as being an ‘information network’; if you post a problem on Twitter, there is a good chance that someone, somewhere will help you. Facebook is much more introverted, it is a genuine ‘social network’; unlike Twitter, few people outside of your real-life circle of friends will see your status updates. Embeddable Facebook posts , just like the irritating introduction of hashtags, help the social network achieve Twitter’s reach.

Twitter is plagiarising the plagiarist though, last week the micro-blogging site introduced some interesting new features. We can now tag friends in photos, and group them together in what Twitter calls a ‘collage’, seems a bit familiar doesn’t it? This is part of a plan to turn the information network a bit more social, trying to muscle in on Facebook’s position of being the de-facto place for sharing photos, videos and other personal stuff you really shouldn’t be sharing.

But Why?

Twitter maintains a proud self identity of being the information network, so why rock the boat? Twitter’s problems lie in a lack of user engagement and time spent on site; we go on, check what’s there, tweet something, then click one of the links. We’ve off the site after only a few minutes.

Facebook though, we sit gawping at it, waiting for one of our friends to say something, similar to the way we stare into the fridge waiting for something delicious to magically appear. Why dumb down like this? Simple, ad revenue! If users spend more time transfixed at the homepage like a moth with a light bulb, the site can charge more for the ads we are mindlessly goggling at.

It’s a dangerous game though, and the signs are that Tweeters are not impressed by this Facebookification (yeah, that’s a word). Twitter has to find the balance between, ad revenue, attracting users and maintaining its identity.

How do they manage this? Not a clue.