by Bryan Boettger, Chief Creative Officer

They weren’t “350 million” — as in the number of people currently using Facebook worldwide. Neither were they “50 percent” (number of users who are regional network members) or “remove…completely” (Facebook’s plan to entirely get rid of networks).

No, the two most important words were: “or everyone.”

As in, you can choose to share your info and updates with only your friends, friends of your friends, “or everyone.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s letter is positioned as an update on how Facebook is dealing with its expanding user base and protecting the privacy of that user base. However, couple the two words “or everyone” with the recent news about Facebook’s impending homepage redesign, and you can start to see that these two feature changes make Facebook more competitive with Twitter’s feature sets.

Here’s how it will work: 1) Users can share their content with everyone, 2) Other users can search this treasure trove of status updates, link sharing, etc., and 3) Everyone starts to be able to share and find content more broadly, much as is being done on Twitter. No doubt Facebook will open up additional APIs so other sites can tap into this content as well.

How does it work now? Do a search via the Facebook search for the term “Zuckerberg Open Letter.” There will be results for Groups and, at the bottom, Posts by Friends where you will find Zuckerberg’s open letter. Now, go to Twitter and do the same search for “Zuckerberg Open Letter” via the Twitter search. Your results are filled with all the commentary people are making about the open letter, links to the open letter, etc.

Imagine the Twitter level of search results, but fueled by the level of activity going on in Facebook. Keep in mind Facebook has 350 million users and Twitter is estimated to have approximately 35 million…

Bryan Boettger Bryan is Chief Creative Officer at The Buddy Group. He enjoys hikes along the shoreline, discussions about photo composition and holding hands with his favorite font (which he can't tell you or else the other fonts will get jealous). Follow him on Twitter @bboettger.

This post is the author's opinion and not necessarily that of The Buddy Group™ (unless it's about ice cream - they never disagree about that).