Like a balding hipster who imitates a young trendsetter’s style, Facebook is updating itself to look a lot more like Twitter.
Unlike Facebook, where friends mutually agree to let one another into their online lives, Twitter lets people share updates and links with anyone who cares to read them.
That has turned Twitter into a tool for helping people to peer into the collective mind and see what people are talking about in real time. It is also a tool for businesses that want to reach customers and monitor what customers are saying about them.
Facebook seems to be very interested in those features. Since last autumn, when Facebook tried and failed to acquire Twitter, it has been slowly introducing features that mimic Twitter.
Last week, Facebook added two new, Twitter-like features. Users can now “tag” friends or companies that they mention in status updates, and they can use a pared-down version of the site called Facebook Lite that resembles Twitter’s stream of status updates.
Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, played down the changes. “We’ve been making iterations to our product over time to reflect the rapid evolution of how people share information online,” she said.
But others see another force at work. “Twitter envy: Facebook has it, absolutely,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a social media consultant at the Altimeter Group, which advises businesses on using new technologies. “Facebook absolutely recognizes that Twitter is a threat, and they’re doing what they can to replicate the features before Twitter gets mainstream adoption.”
To tag another Facebook member in a status update, users type the @ symbol before the friend’s name. The @ symbol is a convention that Twitter users started. In response, Twitter added a section on its site where people can see any tweets that mention them. The mentions are hyperlinked so others can click on them to…