Facebook Is Not Twitter, Nor Can It Be

I've noticed, and I'm afraid I'm not original at all in this, that Facebook is doing its best to copy Twitter. My question is why? Sure, it's clear that the "Twitter" live-streaming model is enjoying enormous success. But, Facebook is not Twitter. In fact, it is obvious to me that they are quite different, and surely the marketers at Facebook must know it too. For all its 'coolness', Facebook is more conservative than Twitter. It creates rather closed-up communities of friends, people you know, which are not penetrable from the exterior without the accept of the Facebook user. Twitter, on the other hand, is rather open; you can follow pretty much anyone you'd like. Thus, Twitter trades dynamism for privacy - but in the Twitter world, that is not a real problem, because the message (the 'tweet') is more important than the user's profile (or so it is in principle at least).

I mean, I totally understand Facebook's desire to copy Twitter (and any other dynamic and funky social media for that matter). Even though the fastest rising group on Twitter is the 40+'s, (as I read somewhere), Facebook wants to preserve its young, cool feel. But eventually, it will have to face to the fact that the Facebook formula is more conservative; apart from developing more applications, it cannot re-invent itself into a completely new application. Facebook's imitation of Twitter and others are already irking the users, who, guess what, are there for the Facebook formula, not for Twitter or some other. I have a feeling that the users are more in touch with the Facebook substance than Facebook developers themselves.