Yesterday Facebook announced on its developer blog that it would be launching a new tool for web designers called the Facebook Live Stream Box, which sounds and looks just like Twitter status feeds.
With a short and easy installation, however, Facebook’s box can be embedded on just about any webpage, allowing users to publish comments in real-time alongside a live stream of whatever content the provider is displaying.
Facebook first successfully tested the tool with CNN’s live coverage of the 2009 US Presidential Inauguration, garnering over a million status updates over the course of two hours.
When looking at screenshots of the tool in action, one cannot help but notice the similarities between the Live Stream Box and Twitter feeds.
Twitter’s popularity rests on the success of its real-time updates service. Each user has their own feed, each user can follow other users’ feeds, and each user can enter particular discussions simply by using particular words or hashtags.
Yet Facebook seems to have taken the idea of a real-time discussion on live events to the next level by allowing developers to install the feeds right next to coverage of the actual event. Users will be able to comment on an important political speech, a championship basketball game, or a TV show, all without leaving the webpage.
Though some third-party developers, like Tweetizen, have taken advantage of Twitter’s open API, coding tools that essentially allow you to embed particular feeds in webpages much like the Facebook Live Stream Box, we have yet to see any hard evidence or statistics that even approach the magnitude of success that Facebook acquired in its tests during the Inauguration earlier this year.
With Facebook wandering into this new territory and potential market, we might be wise to expect Twitter to respond with its own version of the Live Stream Box.
