Facebook Does not Break Twitter: the Failure of @mention
Facebook introduced the @mention feature more than two months ago by now and what was heralded as a blow against Twitter, well, never really took off. Honestly I have seen it used by less than 2% of my contacts, and these people were all working in the digital field. For the common users, it appears that this feature was not that useful. So why this failure? Here are what I think could be the reason.
Lack of communication from FB
Except if you are following what happens in the digital sphere, have you heard of it? Have you received any message, notification, seen any ads, well anything that informed you of this? Maybe Facebook did not spread the word about it enough.
Lack of Critical Mass
As not that many people are using it, it is harder to reach more people, and then the people that have been using it start getting tired of it if no one else around them uses it. So there is no virality and further adoption among other users.
- Usefulness
Of course it is nice to be able to mention your friends name in a status update as you can transmit information without leaving your own profile. But strangely, some people told me they did not like to appear like this as they “strangely” feel it was too public or too impersonal: how often do you call your friends by their full names?
- Twitter jealousy does not bring anything
Mimicking Twitter will not bring Facebook anywhere, as they are two different services. Hope that one day some people in Palo Alto can accept this.
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