Twitter and Facebook are Becoming More Like Each Other

May 26, 2014

You may have noticed that recently, Twitter and Facebook have become more and more similar. Aside from both of their enjoyment of the colour blue, there are some less obvious traits that these two social media platforms have in common. Many of the individual characteristics of each platform have overlapped with the other, in an attempt to increase usability and convenience.

If you haven’t noticed these changes yet, check out some of the similarities the experts and users have picked up:

Profile Redesign

Sources are saying Twitter is slowly rolling out a redesign for their users. The design was tested last February to positive feedback and it incorporates more user information plus more features readily available when you look at a user’s profile. The catch is that it happens to look a lot like Facebook’s current profile design.

The design now has Facebook-like appearance with the profile picture a top a cover photo behind it. Below the profile photo is the basic information about the user such as the user’s name and his or her handle. To the right side, like Facebook, you’ll see a list of suggestions of users to follow. But unlike Facebook, beneath this is a list of trending topics. Facebook usually saves this space for ads.

In addition to changes in the profile, there’s also a change in the way you’ll be seeing tweets from those you follow. The images will be bigger and visible (as opposed to just being an abbreviated link to an image hosting site), and there’s also a new “pin” feature that allows you to put certain tweets on top of the page to give other users an idea of what topics you like to tweet about. And popular tweets will appear slightly larger than the tweets that get less attention from users.

If you want to have an actual look at this new profile, check out the profiles of Channing Tatum, John Legend and Zac Efron.

Subtle Facebook Integrations

When one social media site does something that becomes popular, other sites would try to copy or expand on this new feature. In the case of Facebook, you may have noticed that the site has changed the “subscribe” feature and replaced it with “Follow.” “Hide” has now become ”Unfollow.” In addition, you may notice how Facebook has also included the use of clickable hashtags to find content about something that you want to see. For instance, searching for #BreakingBad would show you Tweets that contain that hashtag, and posts will therefore be related to what you’re looking for.

Speaking of hashtags, this is the darling of Twitter that Facebook has its own version of. Instead of simply listing down trending hashtags, Facebook has changed its algorithm in order to show you only the most interesting and relevant topics at the top of your news feed. So instead of having to search for hashtags that are currently on trend, your newsfeed will instantly show you posts that you may find interesting based on the users you frequently interact with and the topics that are being posted about. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has upgraded its algorithm to be able to compete with the popularity of hashtags.

Video Integration

When Twitter and Facebook were just new, the only time you could share videos was by adding a link to YouTube. These days, it’s a whole different game. Twitter’s Vine has become viral all over the internet. With people posting 6-second clips, the short attention span of users is satisfied with a quick video that they can instantly watch without having to leave their Twitter feed. Facebook, on the other hand has also done this through Instagram’s Instavideo. As you may know Facebook owns Instagram, so adding this feature does seem like they are trying to emulate Twitter’s lead.

Maybe in a couple of years, Facebook and Twitter will have so many things in common that they’ll just be one big social media mogul. Perhaps one of them will buy out the other, like Facebook did with Instagram. However, these two sites have an established following all over the internet. It may be logical to ask whether any users would consider using one in favor of the other if the two became indistinguishable. How do loyal Facebook users feel about Twitter’s new Facebook-like features? And vice versa. Will there be a mass migration of users because it’s possible to use just one social media platform for all the features?

This whole melding of features would also beg the question, could the people responsible for this feature be foreshadowing a merge between these two social media accounts? What do you think? Leave us a comment below!