(2009-03-21) Facebook Redesign Like Twitter

FaceBook's new redesign is more Twitter-like.

Dare Obasanjo [isn't](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/03/21/Facebook Stream Redesign Disruptive Companies Dont Listen To Their Customers Mark Zuckerburg.aspx) a fan. The expectations around how user relationships were created on Twitter are totally different from how they were on Facebook. On Twitter, users explicitly decide as part of following someone that they want all of the person's tweets in their stream. In fact, this is the only feature of the relationship on Twitter. On Facebook, you have relationships with people that attempt to mirror your real life so you have your boss, coworkers, school friends and acquaintances all trying to be part of your social graph because FB is really a kind of "rolodex" (Address Book Metaphor) in the sky. The fact that you got a news feed was kind of a side effect of filling out your virtual rolodex but it was cool because you got the highlights of what were going on in the lives of your friends and family. There is a legitimate problem that you weren't getting the full gist of everything your 120 contacts (average number of Facebook friends) were doing online but it would clearly lead to information overload to get up to the minute updates about the breakfast habits of some guy who sat next to you in middle school.

Robert Scoble thinks it's the next phase of Evolution for them, and has an interesting vision for that. He also sees a Location-based value model down the road. You pull out your iPhone or Palm Pre or Android or Blackberry or Windows Mobile doohickey and click open the Facebook application. Then you type "sushi near me." It answers back "within walking distance are two sushi restaurants that more than 20 of your friends have liked." Hmm, (a) does it make more sense for specialized sites like YelpCom to apply a Social NetworkContext (hmm, using Facebook Connect?), or (b) will Collaborative Filtering provide better recommendations than your Social Network?

• Robert's thinking of dumping his Twitter account, but he hasn't.

Update: FriendFeed has a new interface in beta. Robert Scoble is enjoying it.