World Wide Web War 3.0 -- Facebook vs. Twitter

Wow.

This one has been developing for some time now right before our eyes, but the titanic nature of the faceoff between what are arguably the two most aggressive representatives of Web 2.0 -- Facebook and Twitter -- has only recently heated up to the boiling point.

As Brad Stone, of The New York Times, observed this weekend, Facebook's leaders have recently taken the bold step of providing "a set of technology tools that will let other companies create programs that tap into the heart of the social network -- the endless stream of photographs, status updates and comments that people post to the service."

In doing so, Facebook is trying to catch up to Twitter, which already allows outsiders to have their way with its interface and its content.

Stay tuned. This battle promises to be the best since Microsoft and Netscape squared off in the browser wars a decade or more ago.

David Weir

David Weir is a veteran journalist who has worked at Rolling Stone, California, Mother Jones, Business 2.0, SunDance, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MyWire, 7x7, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which he cofounded in 1977. He’s also been a content executive at KQED, Wired Digital, Salon.com, and Excite@Home. David has published hundreds of articles and three books,including "Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets Its Story," and has been teaching journalism for more than 20 years at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Stanford.

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