Social Media: Comparison between Facebook and Twitter?

In reality, social media is a very broad term which is difficult to define exactly. But in simple words we can define it as the medium for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. It is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate with the world around you. The evidence reveals that there is rising craze among the people for social media.

The people are running behind the different social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, MySpace and many others, to reveal their identity and status. The craze for social media has led every bloggers to actively participate on various social networking sites. But in this modern era, where in the social networking sites are growing too much popularity, it has become too much difficult to choose which one is the best. It is really hard to say which social network should be followed. We are presenting here graph which will show you the continuous rise up of time spent by the people on the social networking sites.

From the above graph it has become too much clear the how popular networking sites are among people. Going through the visitor’s traffic at a glance, we would like to name two most popular networking sites which have grown too much popularity these days. You might be aware of these names, i.e. Facebook and Twitter. Most oftenly, it is seen that people prefer to go through or tagged in these two sites. Now a day, Facebook and Twitter seems to be most dominating sites and are drawing attention of more and more users at astonishing rate. Some people like to follow Facebook while some others twitter. But again question arises, in between Facebook and twitter which one is the best and whom people should follow? We have not arrived here with the intention to draw competition between these. Our aim is to simply throw light on the popularity scale of these two among users from their point of view. Let’s have a glance over these one by one that what are the features of each one which makes the people to choose one of them:

Why Facebook?

There is no hard and fast rule that one should follow a particular social networking site. Everybody is free to choose anyone without any formalities.

Facebook is generally loved by those people who are strongly addicted of staying connected with friends or eager to make new acquaintances. It is specifically meant to get reconnected with old friends and find new one. With the emergence of Facebook, we usually see that people rarely use e-mail or IM tools or any other online social communication. They fully rely on Facebook either for chatting; image sharing or video sharing or any other activities. This all has resulted Facebook to be a most powerful social media and hence craze for Facebook among people is rising day by day.

Why Twitter?

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is a networking platform which lets the people to send short text messages or tweets up to 140 characters to their friends or followers. It is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. It has become quite popular and highly valuable especially among the technically adept; bloggers, online marketers, evangelists, and everyone who have something to promote. It is simple to navigate and add updates. Most of the people prefer to use Twitter as it is a pure communication tool which brings in rapid responses.

Facebook vs. Twitter

• Facebook is intended to be used by those who wish to reconnect with old friends and family members on the other hand Twitter does not prove to be friend-meeting destination.
• One can connect within his specific network on Facebook while twitter permits you to update everyone about you.
• One can simply operate various features like email, instant messaging, image and video sharing, etc. on Facebook while Twitter is a bit harder to get your arms around at initial time.
• Facebook sticks to the more traditional social networking where you maintain your profile while Twitter relies on its micro blogging feature.

One cannot conclude that former is best and later not and vice versa. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages which tend to appeal more to different types of people for different reasons. We are providing the pros and cons of each one which will enable you to conclude which one is best for which kind of activities.

Twitter Pros

• Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything.
• Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends.
• One feed pools all users; anyone can follow anyone else unless blocked.
• Pure communication tool, rapid responsiveness, very interactive, extensible messaging platform with open APIs.
• You don’t have to be logged in to get updates; you can just use an RSS reader.

TwitterCons

• Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies.
• Limited to 140 characters per update.
• Not all people find it immediately useful, Over-emphasis on follower counts.
• Easily abused for spam and increasing the noise level.
• Relatively smaller installed user base.

Facebook Pros

• Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM.
• More emphasis on deep connections with others vs. who has the most connections.
• “True Friends” feature increases your transparency to selected connections; almost like having private and public profiles.
• Application mash up; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc.
• Huge, rapidly growing installed user base.

Facebook Cons

• More difficult to navigate and update.
• Requires investment of time to realize sustained benefit.
• Opt in model requires a user to allow others to connect.
• Less immediate responses; unless you stay logged on continually.
• Overhead of mash up and “thick” applications could limit scalability, bloat cost structure.

Is one’ popularity is a growing threat for another?

Keeping the fame of twitter and facebook in consideration, and deeming popularity in the media, Twitter has an edge over Facebook. Twitter is given priority by various name and fame people like film stars, great politicians etc as it provides famous people an instant look on what their opinions are on certain matters instantly without needing them to regularly visit their profile page. The tweets get sent to the followers who are subscribed to their feeds just like an SMS. The survey reveals that people spend only a few hours on Facebook while majority of the day are spent on Twitter.

Won’t you think the popularity of Twitter as a threat for Facebook? Yes, if the number of followers on Twitter will increase, then it can be possible that Facebook will very soon become outdated. This cannot be quite appropriate answer and as per media experts people opt for the social network as per their choice and convenience. To explore more and reach to the conclusion keep on watching the recent visitor’s traffic on each one.

What’s the Future of Social Networking?

Going throughout the post we have reached to the conclusion that the phenomenon of social networking will grow throughout the era. It is booming and it will. We have also drawn conclusion that Facebook and Twitter both are highly reputable social networking sites and each one has its own advantage and features. And in the coming years either network may or may become a long term winner in the rapidly evolving social networking space. It depends upon the opinion of the user which one he likes to use.


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