Twitter’s simplicity outweighs Facebook’s complexity.

by WyldKard on May 9, 2009

A day doesn’t go by when we log into Facebook and don’t get frustrated with its user-interface. Arguably, what drove us from MySpace into Facebook’s arms is the same thing that makes us use Twitter instead of Facebook’s status update. MG Siegler at TechCrunch put the issue simply:

The number one reason I started using Facebook rather than MySpace several years ago is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity.

Today, navigating Facebook is an exercise in navigating an ever-growing sea of spam. Spam, not in the sense of third-party solicitation, but spam from the ridiculous amount of games, what-x-are-you questionnaires, and virtual gifts that constantly bombard one’s Facebook inbox. Sure, the solution to our gripe is to simply stop using Facebook, but that’s about as productive as removing all one’s friends who send the aforementioned spam in the first place. In a world with competing social networking solutions, it’s nigh impossible to get everyone on the same page. In much the same way as it’s difficult to pull people away from much-played MMOGs because of the investments they’ve made, it’s difficult to pull someone away from a social networking site that has all their friends on it. There’s a reason that so many Facebook users still have MySpace accounts even though they rarely log in anymore: not all their friends have jumped ship just yet. Still, a slow exodus can (and will) occur under the right conditions, and growing complexity and clutter is one such state that social networking sites need to avoid.

At its heart, Facebook has always been a method of communication. It trumps e-mail because it’s not one-to-one communication, but open for similarly-networked people to see. Twitter is the same thing on a less-restricted level, but the key difference between the two networks is that Twitter is ultimately simple, and third-party services are built to support the Twitter framework. Facebook, on the other hand, has become complex because third-parties must integrate their services into Facebook. In other words, no matter how full-featured third-party Twitter applications become, Twitter itself is still a simple beast. Facebook, meanwhile, becomes ever-more bloated as third-parties build their wares into it. Ultimately, Twitter-based services are opt-in, whereas Facebook applications are, well, spammy.

Facebook ought take note of Twitter’s example, because its core functionality is becoming buried in drivel. More and more, what’s competing for our attention once we’re logged into Facebook isn’t the long-lost communication with our distant friends, but mindless “mafia” games that make World of Warcraft look like a scholarly pursuit. The problem isn’t just that Facebook makes these pursuits available to everyone from within the core framework (resulting in players soliciting friends to join), but that there’s no pre-emptive way to out out; users have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, if they want to participate in a Facebook activity/application, rather than have the system set up to auto-deny, say, gaming requests.

Certainly, Facebook and its contemporaries have a place in today’s online culture, because ultimately they’re built to foster closer communities than applications like Twitter. Unfortunately, the big players in this space haven’t figured out how to properly streamline their services yet, leaving much-desired polish in these types of applications for the future. The question then becomes whether Facebook or sites similar to it will apply the right level of polish soon, or of they’ll be beaten to it by a developer who leverages the Twitter API in such a way that Twitter users can set up image galleries, extended profiles, etc. In other words, will Twitter functionality grow to the point of enveloping other core Facebook features, or will Facebook be able to maintain its niche long-term?

While Twitter doesn’t foster the types of communities Facebook does now, that doesn’t mean it can’t. With the right third-party mindset, there’s a lot Twitter can do without losing its core user-base. Facebook, on the other hand, is not in the same boat.

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