Facebook’s ambition

Recently there was some news in regard to Facebook interested in making its status update system more robust and accessible through APIs for developers and presumably users.  This is a direct shot against Twitter and their own system of micro-blogging.  The question that comes to mind though is the sense of community between services and if there is a brand loyalty or do people just see these tools as a means to an end.  I think the majority of people do in fact use these services to stay in contact and if their contacts  aren’t on a particular service then it won’t catch on in that social circle.

 

With that said, both have an immense following with Facebook currently around 200 million users with Twitter being much less than that but growing by leaps and bounds and attracting many from the mainstream.  Facebook of course using its leverage on its other social networking features and user base will try to capitalize on the market, but does that necessarily mean that it will push out Twitter?