Harmonic Aftershock

#TwitterTV

I wrote a piece for this month's The Social Media Monthly magazine about #TwitterTV that takes a fairly deep dive at how Twitter has transformed television and what it all means for brands.

The magazine is available at Barnes & Noble as well as Hudson (airport) book stores or via direct subscription.

The September issue is The Social Media Monthly's "Entertainment Issue" and has some really great content from Mike Brown, Mike Folgner, Matt Forthnow, Ruksana Hussain, Kelley Clements Keller, Marc Kohlbrugge, Kira Newman, Dave Sachse, Joy Schoffler, Cathy Scott, Lauri Stevens, and David Stubenvoll.

6 ways Facebook is turning into Twitter.

A year ago, I could emphatically say that Facebook and Twitter were complementary social networks – each with a set of fairly distinct use cases – and that as such, the two companies weren’t really direct competitors. 

Today it’s become a lot harder to say that since with each new Facebook feature comes with it a giant Twitter déjà vu. Here are six ways that Facebook is turning into Twitter:

1. Follow
From its earliest days, Twitter was designed around the ability for Twitter users to non-mutually follow others. In September of 2011, Facebook launched the ability to “subscribe” to an individual’s public posts. And this past December it changed the name from “subscribe” to “follow” – the exact term Twitter uses.

2. Hashtags
For years hashtags and Twitter were essentially synonymous – When you’d see a hashtag, you immediately thought of Twitter. But then Instagram adopted the familiar tagging lexicon and three months ago, Facebook began supporting hashtags.

3. Instagram Video
In January this past year, Twitter’s Vine app was launched bringing short social video directly to the platform. Six months later, Facebook-owned Instagram began supporting video.

4. Embeddable Posts
In May of 2010, Twitter launched the ability to embed Tweets into third-party web properties. A month ago, Facebook launched “embeddable posts.”

5. Contests/Promotions
As a marketer, I can say it’s much easier to run a contest on Twitter than it is on Facebook. Historically, the only way to execute promotions on Facebook was on a separate tab. 5 days ago, Facebook loosened the reigns on promotions now allowing the use of their main platform functionality for contests.

6. Trending Topics
One of the most powerful features of Twitter is the ability to see “Trending Topics” – which have been credited for breaking news stories. Two days ago, Facebook confirmed its now testing out a “Trending” topics section on its newsfeed.

It’s doubtful that Facebook’s seemingly “copy cat” strategy will in any way have a negative effect on Twitter – as the latter platform continues with strong growth and to solidify its niche as the real-time social platform. After all, imitation is flattery, right?