They might not be announced as ‘major updates’, however the new versions of Facebook and Twitter for mobile devices say a lot about today’s social media strategy.
Indeed, this week Facebook and Twitter updated their mobile interfaces, 5.2 for Facebook for iOS, 5.1 for Twitter for iOS. Okay, nothing abnormal here, the two most known social networks release updates on a regular basis. However, you might have missed something when you updated to the new versions.
“You can now share your favorite news from your newsfeed with a simple touch”. That’s how Facebook announces it. What it means indeed, it’s that you can ‘repost’ someone else’s post on your newsfeed. Still don’t get it? See by yourself.
So, on Facebook, you could like or comment on a post. On Twitter you can ‘favorite’ a tweet or reply. But that’s not all. On Twitter, you can retweet. It’s why Twitter works. The ‘retweet’ button is the cause of Twitter’s success. Therefore Facebook had to do something. Of course you could already share content if you went to www.facebook.com. But what about mobiles? More than half of Facebook users check their notifications on a mobile device. Well now those users can ‘share’ a status, link, photo or video just like they would retweet a post on Twitter. It’s as simple. One click, it’s all it takes.
This is what we are facing today. Standardization. It started with design. Pinterest-like designs for everyone. Even eBay and LinkedIn got it.
Now it goes even further. The functions are alike. You can ‘retweet’ from Facebook. Oh and did I mention the new SoundCloud beta?
More, you can even see ‘top stories’ on Twitter 5.1: “Visualize popular topics from your network” and “Tweets picked just for you now appear in your feed” are two features now available in the new version of Twitter for iOS.
Standardization is happening in the world of social media. What about specifications? What about wanting to be unique? Do you think it will all come to a unique platform in the end? I hope not. Continue the discussion on twitter.com/AntoineXSr.
