Twitter Founder Frustrated by Facebook

The founder of Twitter has been speaking about his frustration with the fact that Facebook isn't allowing Twitter users to search for their friends on Facebook, or even to send any posts from Facebook over to Twitter. He understandably believes that his Twitter users would like to be able to make their Twitter experience fuller by tapping easily into Facebook.

Web companies of late are showing more than a little lack of cooperation in sharing the social information posted on their networking sites with other giant sites. But the Twitter founder also says that he does understand that Facebook is reluctant, and that the companies are speaking together only to relay that each values their social graph as their main asset. They want to assure themselves that if they have a relationship with another site, it is a win-win scenario. Twitter reps speak with Facebook reps often, to see about a way they can work together, but thus far, neither company has discovered a way to do more than they already do.

Twitter already has the licensed stream to companies that include Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, and they display it on a regular basis. The CEO of Twitter said that he wants to work with Facebook regarding exchanging more data, but Facebook is reluctant.

Facebook and Twitter share many of the same users, so having them connect does make sense. Or, perhaps it only makes sense to Twitter, since they have 175 million users and Facebook has half a million. Facebook and Twitter interact now, but this is a one-way exchange. Twitter users can post their tweets to Facebook, but they aren't able to publish updates in their Facebook status at Twitter.

The two social networking giants have had people in talks already, but thus far, neither side is finding a way to share more than they do now. This cuts to the heart of the reticence of Facebook to export data to Web services of other companies. Facebook has already been under fire from Google, along with the media, after they declined to let Gmail users export their contact information from Facebook to Google.

As it stands now, Facebook's social graph is their reason for existing. They guard their user data, since they are on top of the game. But Twitter representatives believe that Facebook will share their data as long as they get something out of these deals, something valuable enough to let down the walls guarding their user information.