PR and the Social Web

The short answer is yes he does and this weekend his cover has been blown.  A few days ago his public twitter profile @finkd had less than a hundred followers, today it is just south of 5000 and expect that to grow at a pace worthy of an inquisitive, spiritual, humorous, eccentric British character actor.

Mark has had the profile for around three weeks but only tweeted yesterday to confirm that it was genuine.  The timing is interesting.  Zuckerberg wanted to buy twitter but they wouldn’t sell.  Whilst facebook is still the more popular by a considerable margin twitter’s growth since October last year has been much steeper.  Facebook’s response has been another redesign, this time one that makes many of it’s front page features much more twitter-like. 

Part of the plan is a response the growth of the Twitterati – celebrity twitterers who are amassing huge numbers of followers.  Zuckerburg said at the end of last week “we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations. Once called Pages, these new profiles will now begin looking and functioning just like user profiles. Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations.”

The new status update box asks, “What’s on your mind?” instead of “What are you doing right now?” and there is a concerted attempt to emulate the immediate stream of information that characterizes twitter.  Zuckerberg again “one way to think about this is as a timeline—or a stream…people share more… the pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone…people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself.”  

I wonder whether Mr Z will use his new found popularity on twitter to tell users about the new look facebook?  Whether he does or not, it is the sheer simplicity of twitter combined with the fact that it is an open source project that has led to its phenomenal success and for now not even the mighty facebook will halt its progress.