The problem with Facebook for public conversations
I’m over looking at my Facebook Page and just finding it lacking. It hit me, it will never be a place like Twitter or FriendFeed where we can have open, public, conversations about stuff that interests us. Who wants to have conversations there? Yeah, a few people will, but the neat thing about FriendFeed and Twitter is that anyone can add to the conversation and they don’t need to join “Scobleizer’s latest shiny object.”
Other problems? How do you get enough content in there to keep people interested, even when you’re tired, sleeping, taking a vacation, or just being a flake? I’m not TechCrunch and don’t have 14 people working for me pushing out content. That’s why I joined in FriendFeed and Twitter — they have interesting stuff for you to read even if I never post there. Heck, check out the Tweets I’ve been clicking favorite on lately. I don’t know how to build a page like that on Facebook. Most of my friends on Facebook are there not to share industry or work news, but to push pictures of their kids or talk about their personal lives. That’s fine, that’s why I like Facebook, but why it’s horrid for having industry or work conversations. And I feel uncomfortable about bringing my work conversations in there.
It’ll be interesting to see if FriendFeed can change this in any way. If anything, I think this demonstrates the opportunity for Mark Zuckerberg. He wants us to be more public with our lives so that he can open up Facebook even more, both to his own real time search engine as well as being able to push content out to widgets on blogs and publishing sites, and, yes, even to Google (Facebook, by being a walled garden, is missing out on a TON of Google traffic).
This is why brands and celebrities don’t quite get Facebook, even though lots are. Brands and celebrities like to have conversations with their customers, fans, and friends. That’s easier over on Twitter. Way easier.
It’ll be interesting to see how Zuckerberg and his new R&D team fixes this.
Original post by Robert Scoble
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