Twitter Exec Adam Bain Takes Aim at Facebook's "Code for Twitter" in Trending News
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| FastCompany |
At any moment Facebook trending posts always include 2 stories about things happening "on social media" ... pic.twitter.com/JsFHaKIaJP— Jacob Kreimer (@jkreim) January 25, 2016
"Code for Twitter" https://t.co/CR58qugZqc— adam bain (@adambain) January 25, 2016
Looking back through various screenshots, its easy to see how Bain got that impression. To be honest I cant really think of the last time I saw the Twitter brand specifically mentioned by Facebook, but you see countless references to social media every day.
Facebook must have some sort of algorithm tweak that changes every instance of “twitter” to “social media” pic.twitter.com/nAm3aNMtts— ಠ_ಠ(@MikeIsaac) January 28, 2016
Working on changing my business card to: COO of Social Media https://t.co/IGtA0PhUXS— adam bain (@adambain) January 28, 2016
A few recent viral stories and disputes were singled out by Bain as prime examples of Facebook's questionable practice, including the 'Kanye Vs Wiz Khalifa' beef, which occurred entirely on Twitter. Also mentioned were the online spats between fast food companies Wendy's and Burger King, and the debate, for lack of a better term, between rapper B.o.B and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
While it is true that Facebook sometimes refers to its own sites as 'social media' as well, the term is much more commonly seen on the platform when the pertinent story centers around Twitter. A Facebook representative, when questioned about the allegations by Buzzfeed, attempted to defend Facebook's system with the following statement:
“Trending topic descriptions and summaries are written with
the goal of making sure that the topic is clear and well-summarized, so that
people get an accurate summary of the news event quickly.”
Unhappy with a response that he felt skirted around the issue somewhat and offered no real answers, Bain tweeted his own response on the 29th.
Asked why Trending refers to Twitter as “Social Media,” they couldn't answer bc their system removes it. https://t.co/qQ6rgiGM8H— adam bain (@adambain) January 29, 2016
Following Bain's tweet, Facebook sent another statement to BuzzFeed:
“Trending topics are surfaced by an algorithm that
identifies topics that have recently spiked in popularity on Facebook. There is
nothing in our trending algorithm or policies that excludes ‘Twitter’ or
related terms. Our review team writes the topic descriptions and sometimes we
get things wrong. For example, the Kanye/Wiz beef clearly unfolded on Twitter
alone. We are always working to improve trending topics on Facebook.”
This seems to have been enough to appease Bain, at least for the time being, as he has not tweeted about his claims since the final statement was made. In the coming weeks, it will be interesting to see just how often Twitter's name pops up on Facebook. I had a look this morning, and there's no mention at all, but then social media doesn't feature either.
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Twitter Exec Adam Bain Takes Aim at Facebook's "Code for Twitter" in Trending News
Reviewed by Unknown
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Wednesday, February 03, 2016
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Wednesday, February 03, 2016
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