Twitterizing Facebook

    The powers that be at Facebook seem to be worried at the rise of Twitter, and maybe they should be. They keep adding new features that echo the other social networking site ("Trending" stories, for instance) and retooling this and rearranging that and generally trying to stay young and hip or at least relevant.
    As far as I can tell, that train has left the station. (Too nineteenth century? OK, that startup has gone bellyflop.) Stories that I have seen, and the evidence of the site itself, suggest that most of the people on there are my age or older. As I understand it, even Twitter is fairly last year at best.
    The point is, maybe Facebook ought to focus on holding on to the people they have already rather than dreaming that they're going to get the teens and twenty-somethings back. There's a story going around that says that the software is set up such that the best way to get your Facebook status updates seen is to Like them yourself, every time. I don't know if this is true, but the programmers at Facebook certainly would. If it is, this needs to be changed. Common sense would say to set it up such that every time you make a status update, you also Like it, invisibly. Otherwise, the best way to work Facebook is to look like a self-centered a-hole. Not that such people are never seen on Facebook, but encouraging them is another thing. They could also add checkboxes allowing one not to Like their own status updates or to make the Like visible if you so choose.
    Maybe it's a tiny thing, but it seems a much better idea than trying to Twitterize. Somebody call Zuckerberg!