Twitter should sue the pants off of Facebook

Have you logged into Facebook in the last day or so? If you haven’t, go ahead and do it now. I’ll wait. (…) So did you see that new feed on the right hand side? It’s part of Facebook’s new “features” which are rolling out this week. Ugh. Forgetting the stupidity of some of the other features (bugs), let’s break down the all-new FB “ticker” after the jump.

As I stared at the FB ticker, I said to myself, “isn’t that like Twitter?” That’s the first step for a good intellectual property lawsuit. Let’s look at the similarities:

Twitter: real-time updates using some nifty Javascript
FB: real-time updates using some nifty Javascript

Twitter: real-time updates appear in reverse chronological order, newest at top
FB: real-time updates appear in reverse chronological order, newest at top

Twitter: updates of people you follow, i.e. people you are interested to know what they’re doing
FB: updates of your friends, i.e. people you are interested to know what they’re doing

Twitter: Click on a Tweet, and more info about Tweeter’s activity appears on the right
FB: Click on a, uh, “tick”?, and more info about friend’s activity appears on the left

I stand corrected. That left / right thing makes all the difference.