FACEBOOK BLINKS, COPIES TWITTER, STILL GETS IT WRONG.
From the Facebook Blog comes the admission that they are having to change their model and copy Twitter: … Translation - we're copying Twitter's real time stream. … Translation: By 2009 it was clear no one gives a sh*t …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands midway through a decade-long arc of Facebook chasing Twitter's product shape. After the 2008 'New Facebook' redesign was framed as learning from old mistakes, the 2009 move to adopt Twitter's real-time stream shows the copying running in the other direction — with critics arguing Facebook still missed the point of what it was imitating. Months later Facebook would declare Twitter 'in the rear-view mirror', and years on, ex-staffers would judge the Twitter-inspired 2013 shift toward more news display a failed experiment as time spent declined.
First-order effects
- Facebook users get a real-time stream grafted onto an interface built around a different model, while Facebook publicly concedes its feed design wasn't keeping pace with how people share.
- Twitter gains validation as the template-setter for real-time sharing, forcing the comparison onto every subsequent Facebook feed change.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's repeated attempts to absorb Twitter mechanics — from this stream to the later Trending topics rework showing regional rather than personalized stories — commit it to a hybrid identity that satisfies neither use case cleanly.
- Competitors learn the wrong lesson: feature-copying substitutes for product clarity, a pattern visible when the 2013 news-heavy feed is later judged a failure.
Third-order effects
- The episode foreshadows the structural critique that both platforms are 'v1' social networking — a bad copy of the analog world — suggesting the copy-each-other arms race can't fix a deeper design problem.
- If feed-design imitation keeps failing to hold engagement, pressure builds for regulators and advertisers to treat engagement metrics as fragile, reshaping how social platform success is measured.
The trend: Social platforms locked into a decade of imitating each other's core mechanics rather than inventing new interaction models, with each copied feature eroding rather than restoring engagement.