"We're not a social network, we're an information network." That's what Twitter's vice president of engineering, Michael Abbott, told the crowd atMobilize 2011 this week. That isn't new branding, Twitter has beendenying it's a social network since at least a year ago. It all dates back to November 2009, when Twitter changed the question it asked users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?".The trouble is, Twitter's main rivals Facebook and Google+ are not sticking to their knitting like Twitter is. Last week, Facebook widely expanded the range of information it tracks: read, listen, watch, 5 types of "life events" and more. Meanwhile Google+ has become known as a place for people to discuss common interests. This is all bad news for Twitter.
Twitter used to be seen as competing with Facebook as a social service. But that was a fight Twitter was never going to win. So, wisely, it shifted the focus to being an information network. That strategy has worked up till now, because Twitter has built up a huge store of what the Web 2.0 Map callsInterest Data - defined as "declarations of what people are interested in."
The problem for Twitter is that both Facebook and Google+ have begun to target the information network business too.
Just last week, Facebook opened up its platform to Read, Watch, Listen data. If users of Facebook allow apps such as Spotify (music), Washington Post (news) and Netflix (video) to automatically share data to their Facebook News Feeds, then suddenly there is a lot more Interest Data flowing through Facebook. Also expanded types of status updates (so-called "life events") will add to Facebook's Interest Data store.
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