Facebook is the new
The San Francisco-based social messaging company isn't saying it explicitly, of course, but it doesn't have to: The tomb of strategic meeting notes published by TechCrunch makes the point painfully obvious. Compared to the enmity expressed over Facebook, the enumerated threats of
According to TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, much of the discussion in Twitter meetings dealt with both Facebook and Google. But while concerns about Google focused mostly on being out-hustled by Google's indexer, the ones about Facebook seem much more fundamental to Twitter's core vision.
"Google is old news," the notes read. And Facebook? Potentially lethal. A whole meeting at Twitter was devoted to this topic: "How could Facebook kill us?" The list, matched up to recent Facebook announcements, shows why Twitter management may have good reason to be nervous:
-- BizDev deals
-- Get Twitter clients to work with Facebook
Facebook won't comment, won't confirm that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has seen the Twitter documents, and generally wants nothing to do with Twitter's newly public strategic positioning. Facebook public relations guru Brandee Barker sent a missive to Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams early on: "I hope these documents will not be published," she tweeted.
Too late. Now that the news is out, Facebook's standing in the eyes of Twitter is now much more clear. Twitter wants to be the first Internet site to reach a billion users. Facebook is already a quarter of the way there.
Let the race begin.
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