Facebook status to kill off Twitter? I doubt it.

NB Since I wrote this Mashable has written this article about the issue. (Take note, no uk compatability for mobile updating [same as no photo printing, or advert running]. Does something tell you that Facebook aren't taking the UK seriously? Besides the fact that anyone living in the South East can only choose London or Portsmouth as their networks, agh! Good job they've got the networking bit down!)

There has been alot of speculation regarding whether the Facebook status feature will kill off Twitter, or at least dampen it's use. To me there is no real conflict between the two. I mean I use both, ALOT admittedly, and use them completely differently.

The Facebook status is for you to tell your friends (people who know you personally) about what you are doing.
You can tell them you are going home for three months and leaving your uni house empty. You can tell them that you just saw a photo of Dave with Andrea who have previously claimed they hate each other (and then share a photo through facebooks share feature to prove it) because they will care about that information. You can tell people you are happy, or sad, or excited, and this will stand (big and proud under your name, thanks to the new facebook layout) until you change it when your mood changes. (And annoyingly you must write your status to conform with '*Your Name* is...' and if you don't type your status in the third person it appears with the grammar of a three year old). Facebook status is a fantastic Facebook extra, but this is not Twitter. Or at least this is not Twitter for me.

Twitter is about sharing web articles, sharing funny and amusing things that have happened, sharing funny and amusing thoughts, sharing deep thoughts. You don't want to tell the whole world on Twitter that your house is empty (as I have mentioned in my previous post about Twitter) for obvious security reasons. Many of your Twitter friends may not know you personally and so don't care about what Dave and Andrea have been doing. And if you mention you are happy, or sad, or excited it is a snapshot of that moment in time (not a continued feeling until you say otherwise).

And those are not the only ways Twitter is different to Facebook.

• Being able to update amusing thoughts from sms is a major plus point of Twitter for me. Often you will think of something amusing only to forget it a couple of mins later. Facebook does not offer text updating yet.
  
• Often there is something that does not warrant a whole blog post, that can be shown in 140 characters. Using Facebook status for linking articles etc is practically unknown.
  
• Each update you make is given a permalink making it easy to share other peoples thoughts, and your own, with people outside Twitter as well as the whole Twitter community. Facebook status can only be seen by your friends and your network.
  
• The Twitter public timeline and search systems such as Twittersearch and Twitterment allow you to find and follow people who interest you via phone, im or on the web.
• Addons allow flexibility of updating. You don't need to log into the site to share with the world.

One thing I would say however, is that if you are privately updating to your personal network of friends it is possible the similarities between Facebook status and Twitter would be more pronounced.
But these are different services, providing very different things. Facebook status is just one of the many things Facebook offers. Twitter is about broader social networking, beyond your group of friends. Eventually as Facebook develops its features further, and Twitter begins to add more complex features and options, they may become more similar. However suggestions that either of these services is intruding on the other to any real degree at this point just seems silly.

Shinyshiny article: Why I love Facebook
Twitterati Article: Will Facebook kill off Twitter?