Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams sat down with host John Battelle. Battelle asked Williams about Twitter’s relationship with Facebook. As you might expect, it’s complicated, according to Williams.
Battelle asked if Twitter was open to doing more integration with Facebook. “I think you’d have to ask Mark [Zuckerberg] that. But you missed your opportunity,” Williams joked (Zuckerberg was interviewed on stage yesterday). Williams noted that Battelle also didn’t ask Zuckerberg why they blocked Twitter’s contact integration.
Williams says that he’d like Twitter users to be able to tap into Facebook to make their experience better. And he said he understands their position in that they see their social graph as their core asset. But he clearly doesn’t think it’s the right idea to block them. Facebook’s reason is that they like to have formal relationships in place for deals with large companies. It’s the same reason they blocked Apple’s Ping service.
“We’re talking to them often”to see if there’s a way to work together,” Williams said of Twitter. “So far, neither side has figured out a way to do that other than what we’re already doing,” he continued.
Yep. It’s complicated.
Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post updates 140 characters long. Twitter “is a real-time information network that connects [users] to the latest stories, ideas, opinions, and news.” The service can be accessed through a variety of methods, including Twitter’s website; text messaging; instant messaging; and third-party desktop, mobile, and web applications. Twitter is currently available in...
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
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