Techcrunch is reporting on Facebook’s new “opener” API. Facebook is trying to encourage outside developers to create tools and applications that play off of the status update on Facebook, similar to how developers have embraced Twitter and created many useful tools like TwitterBerry and Twhirl.
I can remember how, about a year ago, a typical venture capitalist question to web startups was “what is your Facebook strategy?” That irrational Facebook exuberance has been replaced by an understanding that FB and Twitter are more of marketing tools than anything else for most web companies.
I feel that Twitter’s status updates are evolving into more of a useful marketing channel than Facebook. I’m not personally sure if it is because of the differences between the two services’ APIs… My theory would be that Twitter is benefiting by the different type of relationship that the service fosters. While Twitter encourages simple, very public interactions between people with little to no off-line (dare I say “real?”) relationships, Facebook is based on dialogs between more deeply connected individuals. Thus, I follow people on Twitter I would not have a relationship with on FB (such as IBM’s Center for Social Software, ctr4socialsoft - sorry IBM, you can’t be my Facebook friend).
Would love to get other people’s opinions!
