​Twitter Takes Another Teeny Tiny Step Toward Becoming Facebook

Twitter tweaked its website design today to move the status bar where you compose a tweet a couple short inches from the right-hand corner to the center of the page. And guess what, it looks just like Facebook now.

Before, you had to navigate all the way over to either the small nondescript compose button in the corner or status bar in the left rail and now you don't have to do that. It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

Which is pretty much just like this:

Surprised? Nope. It's merely the latest little baby step toward our social networks morphing into one streamlined digital existence. The Facebookification of Twitter got a big boost earlier this year when profiles got stretched-out cover photos that look almost exactly like your Facebook profile. And when Twitter started filtering its feed, then let you tweet photos, and then multiple photos, and tag your friends.

Meanwhile Facebook got a whole lot more like Twitter with News Feed (remember pre-News Feed Facebook? Man that was nice) and more recently, newswire. It also added hashtags and trending topics along the way. Twitter got Vine; Facebook got Instagram Video.

And why not? This is how competition works! Of course, Twitter wants to make it easier to tweet to attract more users, and sure, the design tweak makes it about two inches easier to tweet. But looking more like Facebook helps lower the barrier to entry too, because it's familiar to just about everyone.

There is one small difference. Twitter prompts you by asking "what's happening?" (it used to be "compose new tweet) and Facebook asks "what's on your mind?" I'll leave you to share how you feel about that on your social network of choice.