Twitter and Facebook, world’s two most popular social networks are engaged in a vicious battle to edge each other out as the preferred network for business users. Both networks have their own pros & cons, though neither is perfect but they are as close as it gets to perfection in social media.
The popularity of a social network depends on the target audience it caters to. When it comes to teens, Facebook is understandably well ahead of Twitter in terms of popularity and there’s a good reason to that – the young generation loves the jazzy Facebook interface with images, videos and the funky apps.
However, it’s a different ball game altogether when we talk about business users. I personally prefer Twitter over Facebook as an online marketers and I’ve my reasons to believe so.
No-Frills
IMO, Twitter is a no-frills social network for businesses and is built on the principle of “Keep it short and sweet”. All that a business cares about is being able to reach out to a targeted set of customers and spreading the word as quickly as possible.
As compared to Facebook which lays a lot of emphasis on the “appearance” factor, Twitter is all about simplicity. You have 140 characters to get the message across – that’s it! It’s quick and has a high impact.
Ubiquity
Twitter is world’s most ubiquitous social network. You can access it using your mobile phone, you can open Twitter’s website on your computer or use any of the thousands of third-party Twitter apps available. Facebook is all about web-based access. Though it offers a RSS feed for external access, the feature is hardly attractive. While there are mobile apps available for Facebook as well, a textual mobile app is far easier to build rather than a jazzy look and feel friend finder app like Facebook.
No Walled-Garden Approach
Twitter is far more open than Facebook and the latter has often been publicly blasted for its walled garden approach. From a business perspective, the key functionality of a social network is spreading the word as quickly as possible and as far as possible. Twitter does both – tweets are instantaneous and they can be spread to just about every other social network in a matter of seconds using Twitter’s fantastic integration capabilities. Twitter offers easy integration with Facebook & LinkedIn in order to provide an unparallel reach for a business.
Meaningful Conversations
Twitter is a great place for meaningful conversations. While a substantial number of Facebook users are engaged in social media games like Farmville most of the time, Twitter has a more business-minded audience. Unlike Facebook, Twitter is more about understanding the value of information and making business sense out of it.
Twitter promotes one to one dialogue between a business and a customer unlike Facebook which offers Fan Pages which can be viewed publicly.
Privacy
Facebook has messed up time and again on the privacy aspect. And to make matters worse, it does not seem to be learning from its past mistakes. The latest round of changes on Facebook was meant to simplify privacy controls in Facebook. Instead, it has complicated the matter further. As a result, newcomers are often lost on Facebook. In comparison, Twitter has a simple intuitive interface and there’s no rocket science involved in using it.
All in all, Twitter makes more sense for business users as compared to Facebook. Of course, if you are a staunch loyalist of both Twitter and Facebook, I’d recommend a healthy integration of both services in order to promote your business. If not, 140 characters can create the magic word for your business.
I think the best feature of twitter is it´s simplicity… It have allowed a ton of third parties aplications to ad new features to the original tool.
I just wish they'd develop the equivalent of the “Facebook Purity” GreaseMonkey script (which gets rid of all the FarmVille, MafiaWars, etc. garbage) for Twitter to purge out the moronic FourSquare noise!
Now if only they could combine the two to create the ultimite social media platform for businesses. I believe both will survive in the long run because they do cater to different target markets. @jgwentworth
I agree…Twitter and Facebook do occupy different social media spheres and I dont think they will put each other out of business. As a blogger, I prefer twitter for the instantaneous response I get to my posts. However, I like Facebook because it brings a more steady readership in a long run.
I dont think we should all be on every SM platform that exists, but Twitter and Facebook are the base platforms and they both have good and bad points…
Great article Douglass, keep em coming.
Shouldn't be thinking 'or', should be thinking 'and'. Get on both as every individual has different tastes…
I agree. Although there is a lot of fanpages and business centric pages on FB as well, Twitter has the slight advantage, as it can be such a powerful and useful tool for businesses/business owners. It can get the message across swiftly, and it encourages real time discussion between customers and owners.
Thanks Dino.
I feel your pain Brendan.
Easy to use and quick to implement. Thanks David.
They do appeal to different groups alright. On a lighter note, I heard it said on Twitter by @praetorius that Facebook is the people you went to high school with. Twitter is the people you wish you went to high school with.
Seriously, they both serve their purpose if the user's objective is well defined.
Thanks JG.
I like both, myself and I think for business purposes.. one needs to implement both.. they work hand in hand rather than one over another.
And I don't think in one over another or one serves a different market over the other… both serve the same market.. in my opinion just in different flavors! When implemented together, they are awesome!
Carol
Interesting take, but I tend to see both channels as complementary rather than exclusive. The other problem IMO is that TW remains rather unreliable as a platform in terms of availability. Clearly something an IPO might fix but, meantime… 🙂
Best,
J.
FB wants Business page Admins to have the ability to connect to Twitter, but the app has a devious bug. Business pages are now spammed by a 'Getting Started' tab, which CANNOT be removed yet, without making a connection.
Needless to say, not all Admins find this useful, and some are downright angry about it. There is even a FB user group that is targeting the issue, insisting on some opt out or cancel ability.
Yes, FB is a useful tool for us, and so is Twitter. But to constantly put that tab in front of all others on the business page view…it has many seeing reds instead of green$.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?community=904#!/g…
I am going to have to disagree, both are beneficial and I do have a preference for Facebook so maybe a biased view 🙂
Facebook has a lot going for it at the moment with regards SEO and the “likeability factor” that is beginning to sweep across the net. Using the “like” button on web pages is adding to Facebook's new open graph project which is ultimately a search engine for the 500 mil users. Major changes are taking place and businesses are beginning to recognise that fact.
The competition between the two is not as fierce as it was, in fact Facebook, in the last few days, introduced a Get Started Page on FB Fan Pages that inlcudes making sure you connect with your Twitter account. Yes Facebook wins as it's pages are promoted on Twitter with all it's benefits but there are those that are not members of Twitter who also benefit from new subsribers. Interesting times ahead IMO 🙂
ผมว่ามันน่าสนใจทั้ง Facebook และ Twitter นะ
Facebook does have that creepy feeling to it nowadays…
Walled garden, thanks for that one
Did i miss any other obvious social media selling keywords?
I’ve said that least 2266479 times. SCK was here
i also bet ur fat, hairy, butterfaced, and slutty bitch that sells her body because she failed high? school and plans to marry some rich dude and cap off ur life raping his income and having sex with him once a year and cheating on him on the side! hmmmm naughty pamela.
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