Oh, Facebook, how you've lost your way! A few weeks ago, it publicly declared its obsession with Twitter by redesigning its homepage to spotlight a real-time feed of minutiae a la Twitter. Today comes news that its obsession runs even deeper: Just like Twitter, Facebook will now allow its news feed to be piped off-site. Essentially, this means that you won't have to go to Faceboook.com if you want to look at your news feed. And last time we checked, looking at your news feed was the whole point—not just for users, but for Facebook's bottom line, too.

One of Twitter's chief virtues is that it has allowed developers access to its technology to build third-party programs based on its technology. This is how programs like Tweetie, Twitterific, and Twhirl have come to be; they're desktop clients that allow you to tweet and monitor the Twitterverse without actually going to Twitter.com. On principle, this is great; it's a smoother user-experience and creates a buzzing development community around the application. But that doesn't mean it's good business. Every time somebody skips Twitter.com and opts to view her tweets through a desktop client instead, Twitter loses out on page views. And if you're losing out on page views, you're losing out on ad revenue. Twitter's philosophy is a blue-sky idealism endemic to Silicon Valley: Offer up your technology for free, even if it means you won't be able to make any money.

This hasn't been a huge problem for Twitter, since it doesn't actually have a business model (and therefore has no ad revenue to worry about). Facebook's entire business model, though, is glued together by ad revenue, and the glue's strength is already questionable. So programs like Seesmic Desktop, which ports news feeds off of Facebook.com, have no upside for Facebook. The company loses page views, fritters away ad revenue, and weakens the bond between user and site.

And all for what? To be more like Twitter? Twitter may be the new, popular kid in the Valley, but it hasn't actually proved itself where it actually matters for a for-profit business: at the bank. Facebook was on its way toward figuring out a business plan, but now they're flushing their efforts and wagging their tongue in Twitter's wake.

There's an old Swedish proverb that I suggest Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tape to his door: "Envy shoots at others and wounds itself." Put away the bow and arrow, Zuck. You're not going to kill any birds this way.