Nick O'Neill over at AllFacebook has an interesting idea — Facebook could trounce Twitter if they would only add the ability to fetch status updates from their API. Interesting idea… but so very, very wrong.

The first big mistake here is that Facebook already allows for fetching of status updates, something with FriendFeed users so that whenever I change my status on Facebook, it'll show up shortly to all my followers on FriendFeed. The second is the fact that O'Neill doesn't seem to recognize that Twitter and Facebook cater to two very different crowds. And while there is some overlap between them, making it easier to grab status updates from Facebook won't change that, nor will it give any real advantage to the Facebook crowd.

As I've seen it, there are two types of people in the social space: Those who want everything under one roof (people who use Facebook, MySpace, et al. primarily) and those who distribute themselves between various services (who use Twitter, Flickr, etc. and usually tie it all together with FriendFeed or similar service). Just because Facebook could make it easier for developers to create applications similar to the ones that currently extend Twitter's usefulness isn't going to mean there'll be a mass exodus away from Twitter. Really, we won't give a damn.

Never mind that those of us who live the distributed social life like it, whether because it's more resilient (with multiple services in each niche, if one crashes, we can use another in the interim) or because it's better for privacy (no eggs in one basket syndrome, can use different sites for different friends). The whole way this is set up, there's nothing Facebook can really do to make us move over to them short of literally killing off all competition.

In short, some Facebook API changes (if even needed) won't do anything to kill off Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are in two different worlds.

Oh, and I just found that back in late August O'Neill wrote about how Live Feed would kill off Twitter and FriendFeed. So far you're zero for two, Nick! But keep playing, let's see how deep you can dig this hole. That, or stop the hatin'.

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