They’ve announced that Facebook apps can now access a user’s own status update, and those of their friends, and also make it easier for the app to update the user’s status update (with the user’s permission). That’s it. This isn’t Facebook making anyone’s status updates available to anyone on the web (like Twitter does, if you choose to have your account publicly available) – there’s simply no ‘public’ element to it!

The fundamental difference is that your Facebook is a private network of people you trust (or at least, it is if you’re using the site as intended), whereas your Twitter is your window to a load of people/bots/’SEO specialists’ (aka spammers?) who you both do and don’t know. Facebook has achieved mainstream adoption in a lot of countries, Twitter is nowhere near that yet, and unless they significantly enhance the default twitter.com service and UI, it never will be. My mum won’t bother with Twitter if she has to download a third party application to actually make it useful.

Also, not everyone wants to share everything they do publicly anyway, which is why Facebook gives you the greatest amount of privacy control of any site I’ve seen on the web and most people (in the UK at least) who are online are now using it. It’s virtually ubiquitous.

And with Twitter’s service being used for @replies so much more now than actual status updates (i.e communication/commenting), it’s really starting to creak in terms of its 140 character and API access limits.

Can I also highlight that I’m using Facebook Connect to post this comment. Twitter’s equivalent API mechanism of allowing you to use your credentials on other sites, is nowhere near as safe (as the external sites get to see your password) – another big hurdle Biz Stone et al need to overcome.

As for the ‘without the crap’ comment, BOTH services are user-configurable, so if you keep getting crap coming up, you need to stop following the crap-producers on Twitter, or have words with your Facebook friends to tell them they’re pissing you around. At least Facebook lets you block specific applications if they get on your nerves, whereas with Twitter you can’t filter out certain tweets without using a third party app.

P.S. David Miller, the SMS/text thing is only available in certain countries – it was disabled in the UK last year for instance, due to cost. Though Twitter could bring it back as a premium service. However, anyone with a mobile phone that’s less than a few years old should have a browser on it that lets them access Facebook/Twitter/any other site with a mobile version.

Agree with it all round.

I think while points 1-3, about different networks and uses, are subjective, true today, but could always sway in time, point 4 really nails it on the head as for Facebook to open up comments would mean a deep shift in what it’s about, and could actually dent where it’s most powerful: connecting and sharing with the people we know.

That being said, I wonder how long it will take a crowd of facebookers to turn facebook status updates into microblogs. It is facebook and the masses are there to give the incentive to me as long as I can separate the account from my personal facebook status updates.

For example: My brothers and I created a facebook app Status King. It is based completely around clever Status Updates and we are the first facebook app to turn facebook status updates into t-shirts. If Facebook gives us the ability to create a Status Update microblog for our app, I would use it in a heartbeat—just don’t make it so my friends have to see it without following.

If status updates become the microblogs and customer service and communication for apps, groups, fan pages, and even any website hooked to facebook connect, then I can see why people think this might just be Twitter’s death. Too bad “status update” does not have the wordplay of “twitter”—Twitter still has the most perfectly brandable name I have ever seen.