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on Twitbook

Just reading the article on the unsuccessful negotiations of Facebook to buy out Twitter. My first thoughts are that I am relieved that deal didn't go through. According to the article it failed over the price. I wonder what Facebook and Twitter users think of such a takeover. According to this ZDNet post,

The microblogging service competes directly with Facebook's own "status" feature, to the point where many Twitter users have configured their Facebook statuses to display their Twitter statuses.
Given that, some Facebook-Twitter users are probably ok with it. What about Twitterers only, or those that like the simplicity/purity of Twitter. My immediate visions are of a Twitter interface wrecked by 1,000's of useless plugins and irrelevant, annoying advertising. Then we have interoperability. One of the great things about Twitter is its openness. It has great apis, very liberal use of RSS. Not so sure that Facebook has quite the same philosophy here. Sure, Twitter is or has been unreliable at times but at what price (to the total experience) should those niggles be addressed? Business is business and these companies need to work hard to maintain their position but I hope in any negotiations they consider their respective end-user communities and what attracts those communities to their relevant services. Can't miss the opportunity to do a plug for the social network that we developed here - have a look at me.edu.au if you want to see an alternative designed for those in education and meet up with some educators doing some fantastic stuff on the Web.

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