Facebook Joins the Interaction Internet with Purchase of Branch.com

Facebook is acknowledging the trend of conversational websites begun by Tawkers.com and Twitter with its purchase of Branch.com, a birthchild of the Twitter founders.

Twitter founders, Ev Williams and Biz Stone launched two new age conversational websites, Medium and Branch.com in early 2013. While Medium is an invite only website, the popularity of Branch.com, a conversational format social network, quickly got the attention of some big players in the world of social media.

Purchased by the leader of the pack, Facebook, Branch.com is now in competition with a new wave of social media sites that feature open forum formats as opposed to a monologue based interaction. Josh Miller, head Branch product developer and co-founder, described the social media site as follows: "...the internet is dominated by monologues. We wanted to build a home for dialogues online, combining conversation with the internet."

Very similar to the already popular Tawkers.com, Branch.com and its social media owner hopes to get the same attention received by already established open forum sites. Reported by a spokesperson of Facebook, the new website wishes to become a part of the "evolutionary leap" in online sharing and social media.

"Facebook is a leader in the social media trend and its direction," said one Facebook representative. "Online social interaction and multi-conversational sites are the wave of the immediate future. We have to be a part of that."

Social media is experiencing the growing pains that many websites have felt over the past few decades, evolving from IM sites, chatrooms and social interaction sites like My Space into conversational forums like Tawkers.com and Branch.com. The evolution of monologue based sites into conversationally driven forums is apparent as the social media giant Facebook joins the trend to the next wave of online interaction and social outlets.

For more information on Tawkers.com, visit the website, www.tawkers.com


JD Arbuckle is a freelance journalist specializing in consumer education on a variety of topics including social media.