Gadgetopia

Facebook’s Response To Twitter: Interesting take on what Facebook is doing to counter Twitter’s growing influence. In short, they’re trying to make it so that Facebook can do everything Twitter does, the biggest thing being public broadcasting of information, as opposed to just sending updates to approved friends.

Taken together, these represent a concerted response to the rise of Twitter as a real-time message broadcasting system that goes beyond members’ personal circle of friends.

One of the biggest changes is that Facebook is getting rid of the distinction between private profiles and public pages. The 5,000-friend limit will be dropped from the public pages. Facebook doesn’t want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans. Up until now, Facebook Pages haven’t really been the place fans go to connect with their favorite celebrities or brands. For that, they’ve started going to Twitter, where they can get updates in real time.