There is little doubt that social media has conquered the web in the last few years. So, which is the world’s most popular social network – Facebook or Twitter? The battle of supremacy between world’s social networks clearly looks to be two-horse race at the moment. Will the scenario change next year or perhaps even a couple of years from now?
The way social media has shaped up over the last few years has been astonishing. From being written off as an “entertainment-only” paradigm, social media now spearheads marketing, advertising and customer service needs in the business world.
Staggering Growth
Both Facebook and Twitter are currently growing at a staggering rate. Facebook already holds the distinction of being the most popular website in the United States, well ahead of Google and Twitter. Globally, Facebook has a 500 million strong user community.
On the other hand, nearly 300,000 new users are signing up on Twitter every day making it one of the most popular websites worldwide. So, it’s far from easy to pick a winner in this clash of social media titans.
It’s all about Innovation
The best thing I like about Facebook as well as Twitter is their ability to constantly innovate and re-invent themselves. Both have been true game-changers in their own rights, yet it’s refreshing to see them work hard to add new business-friendly features instead of sitting pretty on their existing laurels.
Once dubbed to be a “mere micro-blogging tool”, Twitter has transformed into a wonderful business tool since its inception. And now, the deal is getting even better as Twitter continues to add business-friendly features such as Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Products for Partners.
On the other hand, Facebook is looking at building new partnerships in order to cater to the business user segment. It recently inked a revolutionary partnership with Skype thereby opening the possibilities of enterprise collaboration as well as unified communications solutions within the social networking space.
Facebook is also working hard to resolve some of its biggest limitations – simplify the “Privacy” aspects and make its business pages more appealing. With a brilliant business mind such as Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, things are only expected to get better at Facebook from here on.
What about other social networks?
With all due respect to other social networks, I don’t think they stand a chance to compete with Twitter and Facebook. Obviously, the reasons are different – some of them (e.g. Myspace and Orkut) have simply outlived their expectancy while several others are focused on niche areas (YouTube – Video, Foursquare and Gowalla – Location-Based Social Networking, LinkedIn – Professional Networking).
The future is bright, the future is social
Contrary to common public perception, I don’t consider Facebook and Twitter as competitors vying for the social media throne. I believe that both these social networks are a lot different from each other and will stand their ground in the years to come. While Twitter is all about simplicity and speed, Facebook offers an unparallel visual appeal from the business perspective.
So, will 2011 belong to Twitter or Facebook? I’d say that it will belong to “social media”.
Normal Twitter muy divertente and simply
I’d love to be more active on FB, especially when I see the rate at which it is expanding, but I’m going to wait for them to fix the privacy issues before I do.
Although it’s close to impossible to have total privacy on the web, Facebook has been very aggressive in resolving its ever evolving privacy concerns. It was recently cleared by the Canadian Privacy Commission, which IMO is the world’s most strict privacy body, for having met its strict privacy requirements.
Also, most of the privacy issues on Facebook could easily be resolved by customizing your privacy settings. I encourage you to take a second look at the site.
I think both these tools have allowed so many businesses to achieve unbelievable results at next to no cost. As a blog and business woman I know both Facebook and Twitter have delivered the most benefit to what I do, closely followed by LinkedIn.
I really think YouTube is something that people miss out on too and now that all these sites are integrating so well together there’s no need not to be using them in a strategic way.
Hands down though Twitter is the most fun and best for building relationships. I think those 140 character limitations have been the best thing for succinct messages!
As Natalie pointed out both have their differences Twitter is more an information network and facebook a Social network, not to say social doesn’t come into Twitter. Don’t pick one or the other thats not the way forward be flexible to where your friends or audience are whether its linked in, flickr or an industry platform.
And don’t let You Tube be forgotten either. Numbers mean nothing in bilions or 10’s all we need to do is communicate with those we know and help them share out information to those they know. realtionships are social and so is communicating.
People are important and they will be ative and social with the relevent media provided.
I agree that Twitter is an information network with social access. That’s why Twitter will be the one to watch out for in 2011. Information is currency.
i’d agree with most of the comments above saying that these are two different social sites with different focuses but still if there’s some preference then its going to be twittter…cuz facebook sucks!!
Agree with you 100% that Twitter and Facebook aren’t in direct competition with one another. Though Twitter is slowly moving into Facebook’s territory with their latest updates. There is a fundamental difference between a user’s expectation on Facebook and Twitter. I think Twitter wins from a community and information aggregation standpoint whereas Facebook is top for business interaction with their customers/fans.
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