Facebook Adds Twitter-like Functionality

Facebook recently announced a few changes to their status update system that closely replicate Twitter's offering:

Your friends' three most recent updates on the home page
A brand new page to see all your friends' updates at once
An RSS feed to put your friends' updates in your reader of choice
The ability to subscribe to a friend's updates via SMS
The ability to easily update status from your phone by sending an SMS to Facebook starting with the "@" character

Among my non-Twitter converted friends, the toughest group to convert after Luddites is Facebook users. Their basic response is, "Why would I need a service like Twitter do do what I already do with Facebook?" That together with, "all of my friends are on Facebook, so what do I need Twitter for?" are the two most common push backs.

When I look at Twitter, I see a crowd who was out of college before Facebook came along. They see Twitter as a cool service, but only because they weren't already locked into Facebook through years of network building.

Considering that Facebook offers even more Twitter-like functionality in the form of SMS subscriptions and status updates, their case for standardizing on Facebook appears to be even stronger.

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