Infinite Path

Twitter would love to hop into bed with Facebook, but it appears the two firms have been unable to reach an agreement.

Evan Williams, founder of the microblogging service, revealed the company is looking to integrate its user lists with those of the social networking site, but so far its advances have been shunned.

“We are talking to them often to see if there is a way to work together, but so far neither side has seen a way to do that,” he told a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

He added he was “frustrated” that Facebook had blocked a move which would have allowed people to see if there friends from one service were using the other as well.

To be honest, it’s not all that surprising the social networking site doesn’t want to play ball. Facebook has around 500 million users, whereas Twitter has 75 million. It doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to surmise that this integration would be something of a one-way relationship and clearly the microblogging service has the most to gain.

However, in publicly courting Facebook, Twitter has to be careful it doesn’t isolate its existing user base. Many who sign up for the site do so because it doesn’t harvest the sort of information social networking sites do, by cosying up to Mark Zuckerberg, Williams could set alarm bells ringing among those 75 million users.

That said, those same users also have to come to terms with the fact Twitter is a business and the “free” service they enjoy has to be paid for somehow.

With Williams claiming there are “a million ways” for the company to make money, there could be 75 million people who have to get used to some serious changes in the next year or so.