Twitter, Facebook rivalry deepens

Katy Perry (pictured), Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are Twitter's most followed celebrities and have even more Facebook 'likes'.

Katy Perry (pictured), Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are Twitter's most followed celebrities and have even more Facebook 'likes'.

Published Nov 15, 2013

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Washington - Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are the most followed celebrities on Twitter, yet the pop stars have even more “likes” on Facebook. Now the world’s biggest social network is looking to capitalise.

As Twitter revels in its successful initial public offering, Facebook is pushing on to the microblog’s turf, preparing to roll out a tool that makes it easier for the rich and famous to chat with their followers, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the feature had not been released.

Letting actors, athletes and politicians communicate in 140 characters via public question-and-answer sessions has helped Twitter’s popularity by removing the barrier between celebrity and fan. The stakes escalate now that Twitter must appease investors while also competing more deeply with Facebook, which is helping its billion-plus users interact with their heroes.

“This is an area of strategic importance to us,” said Justin Osofsky, vice-president of media partnerships and global operations at Facebook. “We’ve been building our partnerships team in Los Angeles and globally to better work with celebrities and media partners and simultaneously investing in products that better surface the conversation.”

Osofsky didn’t comment on specific products the company was developing. He said his team had grown to more than 10 people and continued to expand. Rachael Horwitz, a Twitter spokesperson, declined to comment.

This is fresh territory for the web upstarts. Two years ago Facebook and Twitter were venture-backed social-networking companies trying to prove there was big money to be made in online chats. Now they’re worth about a combined $140-billion and vying for leadership in the social-media advertising market.

The celebrity battle is symptomatic of a bigger clash between the two companies, which are located about 48km apart in the US’s technology hub. Both are vying to connect advertisers with mobile users, bolster international revenue and hire Silicon Valley’s most coveted developers. Twitter spelt out the challenge in its IPO prospectus.

“We compete against many companies to attract and engage users, including companies which have greater financial resources and substantially larger user bases,” Twitter said.

Twitter is still a fraction the size of Facebook, with about one fifth the market capitalisation and number of users and one 12th the revenue.

Facebook is using that heft to lure celebrity attention. It’s improving products to woo musicians, sports stars and other popular personalities, encouraging them to interact with fans, according to Osofsky.

“They are competing on core functions that each service needs,” said Josh Goldman, a general partner at Norwest Venture Partners in Palo Alto. “That is sort of creating a battle between these two companies, even if the use case is different.”

Celebrities including Cher, Martha Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus have already held question-and-answer sessions using available features.

Stewart, with about 800 000 “likes” on Facebook, took to the site last month to answer questions ranging from what she thought was the best cake option for Halloween to her advice on puppy training. “Persevere and listen to the dog,” Stewart wrote.

The offering is another way to attract stars who, like actor Channing Tatum, use Facebook’s Instagram service to post pictures of their children. Or like basketball player Kobe Bryant, who posted a video on Instagram of his injury rehabilitation before even joining Twitter’s Vine service.

In addition, Facebook showed the first official clip of the movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire earlier this month, and in August premiered the music video Holy Grail by Jay-Z featuring Justin Timberlake.

Twitter still gets plenty of celebrity attention. That includes the first photos of Kanye West’s and Kim Kardashian’s baby earlier this year. Last month, Kelly Clarkson used Twitter to show pictures from her wedding. And Bieber, who has 57.3 million “likes” on Facebook and 46.8 million Twitter followers, is a regular user of both sites to share videos, his whereabouts or whatever crosses his mind.

In its prospectus, the first competitor Twitter mentioned was Facebook – including Instagram – and said the company had “been introducing features similar to those of Twitter”.

The same filing has a section explaining how the site works, with a conversation featuring chef Mario Batali and musician Gavin Rossdale. It also showed a tweet from President Obama, who posted after winning re-election last year.

“It’s still the default to just go to Twitter and gain a following there,” said Phil Contrino, chief analyst at researcher BoxOffice.com. “But Facebook in a lot of ways can be just as powerful. Maybe you’ll see more celebrities starting to use that as Twitter gets a little crowded.”

Early last month, Twitter said it would provide links that let pay-TV users record or view programmes on Comcasts cable service, as it tried to crack the television market. The goal is to have See It buttons on all pages on the web, similar to Facebook’s Like button.

Facebook is pursuing some of the same TV partners, sending weekly reports to networks that include data around user activity on the social network tied to top shows.

Nina Garcia, a judge on the reality show Project Runway and creative director for Marie Claire magazine, said she used Twitter for more immediate gratification and Facebook for deeper communication.

“I use them for different purposes,” Garcia said. “I will post on Twitter and then I will go back and I will do all my favourite pictures on Facebook.”

Garcia has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, more than five times the size of her audience on Facebook. – The Washington Post News Service

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