When nerds attack
FB returns fire in latest Twit-for-tat
- Last Updated: 12:50 AM, June 20, 2013
- Posted: 12:33 AM, June 20, 2013
Take that, Twitter!
Facebook’s Instagram is expected to roll out a new video feature today to rival Twitter’s 6-second video service Vine — escalating a digital tit-for-tat between the social-media players.
Video snippets are the latest toy for social-media users, and Facebook could be angling for a piece of the action, especially after a string of lackluster product launches that fizzled.
Facebook’s anticipated video play would ramp up its Twitter rivalry to yet another area as the two compete in an arms race that is beginning to mimic classic corporate rivalries of tech history’s past. Think Apple versus Microsoft or Netscape versus Internet Explorer, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
Getty Images
In social media’s ping-pong content contest it’s Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s serve as Mark Zuckerberg (above) of Facebook sets to announce its Vine-like video service.
“Those were huge rivalries and went on for years,” he said. “This could be one of those, or at least it has the seeds of that today. Facebook and Twitter are fierce competitors and don’t have good things to say to each other.”
The venom has roots in one of the biggest letdowns in Twitter’s short history, when Facebook beat it last year to buy Instagram for $1 billion.
Just last week, early Twitter investor Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures said the loss of Instagram still stings, calling it a huge setback.
“They’d have tweets. they’d have photos, and they’d have videos,” Wilson said at a New York tech talk. “And I think that would be the trifecta that would kill Facebook.”
Without Instagram, Twitter developed its own filtered-photo sharing service. Under Facebook’s control, Instagram hit back in December when it stopped allowing its photos to display directly in Twitter users’ feeds.
“There has been a lot of back-and-forth over the years,” Blau said. “There is going to be a lot of copying.”
Just last week, Facebook co-opted one of the features most identified with Twitter: the hashtag.
While the hashtag — used to organize social media conversations around topics and target ads — was made popular by Twitter, it is a natural fit for Facebook, said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
“By launching Clickable Hashtags, Facebook is playing catch-up to Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr,” said Chowdhry.
Facebook’s entry into a new video-creating category is not certain to succeed, and Twitter doesn’t seem to be trembling.
“How did their Snapchat clone do?” one Twitter insider said, referring to Facebook’s last copycat app, which rivaled the hot photo-sharing service with fast-deleting images.
Facebook’s Poke app, which had a similar ephemeral photo function, had a fast launch with plenty of promotion but hasn’t yet truly threatened Snapchat, a company that is on the verge of a major fundraising round despite competition.
“There have been a number of public, big-time announcements from Facebook,” Blau said. “A number of them are outright failures or big question marks.”
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