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I think that twitter is a better positioned for self expression and CRM (see Zappos, Get Satisfaction, etc..). Facebook is more of a dating and photo sharing app which is trying to evolve into something bigger.
The point is that Facebook offers community around talking to real friends, sharing photos, sharing video and the ability to stay connected because people that use facebook keep their info up to date (email/phone). These are all things that 'normal' people care about.
I love Twitter, but it's not going to spread as wide as Facebook.
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Facebook is just more appealing to people at large. My mom isnt going to get on Twitter. My mother-in-law won't waste her time in a place where none of her real friends hang out. My dad or father-in-law could care less about 'telling' random people what their doing.
The point is that Facebook offers community around talking to real friends, sharing photos, sharing video and the ability to stay connected because people that use facebook keep their info up to date (email/phone). These are all things that 'normal' people care about.
I love Twitter, but it's not going to spread as wide as Facebook.
http://twitter.com/franswaa
To make this point, you will need way more analysis and research. Remember, most people aren't using (or even will use) Twitter today or in the future.
Just because a small group of people are running around talking about how we all MUST be on twitter, it doesn't mean it's true.
Also, I believe the real reason people (not companies) are using twitter is because all of a sudden they think they have "fans" - I am working on a post about this.
Also 2 - tv/radio reporters are using twitter because it makes them seem relevant. 10 yrs ago they were all behind by a year on every new trend. today they need (must) try to look like they are hip and trendy with whatever the few are running around with. combine that with #1 also above and you see why they are pushing it. more on this as well later this week.
As for Rob's point, this happens all the time - small company innovates and creates something new, big company does it and wipes them away. (or they acquire them)....
Maybe different tools have different use.
Even though it took me a while before I decided to join Twitter (@theconcierge), I think being limited to 140 characters is a plus.
Twitter is a good way for me to get a digest of what people on my radar are doing or talking about that day.
David Weinberger's piece 4,5 Things that Twitter teaches us http://bitly.com/11sFmp raises some good points...
Facebook can be very trivial (someone's latest drinking expedition and the like).
It did allow me to catch up with long lost friends and far away family members though.
Anyway all of these tools are an ever evolving animal so God knows how we will use them 6 months from now.
Serge the Concierge turned 4 today
Serge
'The French Guy from New Jersey'
Twitter is going to get bigger and better,as it doesn't pretend to be what it's not. I mean after all it's all about communicating and staying connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Facebook on the other hand needs to watch it,i understand the need to make facebook more profitable than it is currently, lets all just hope something better doesn't show up (of course it might!)on the horizon. If that happens they are going to be losing millions of users in the process just like myspace did.
Thus a Twitter search engine, I think, could be monetized easily. FB doesn't have search like that.
It's probable that both Facebook and Twitter will be huge, as competitors, sure, but also in their own spaces where the other one isn't.
Also, I see tweets with personal stuff on it. Not sure I see a big difference between the two there. If you have 1,000+ friends/followers, then many of them aren't close friends, rather they might just be friends of friends, people in your field, etc.
Take a look at the lexicon stuff on Facebook. It has the potential to be much bigger than the current twitter search. Jesse Stay has a good post on Facebook search at http://staynalive.com/articles/2009/03/22/the-p...
We need to remember that Twitter has improved very, very slowly. Anything related to openness or APIs and status updates has really happened only in the past year for Facebook. They are improving very quickly.
The misgivings that people are likely to have about things like keyword based solicitations in response to "intimate moments" are likely to be so strong that FB users would react VERY negatively. Remember what happened with Beacon?
Because the entire service was started on the premise of a Walled Garden where it was safe and private to connect with your (mostly real) friends and acquaintances (Facebook still has terms of service that theoretically bar anyone from engaging in overt commercial behavior from their profile), it seems unlikely that they can sneak these things in through the backdoor.
Social context implies social trust, and any violations of that trust tend to backfire worse than the average corporate/PR faux-pas. Read Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" Chapter 4 on "The cost of social norms".
Social CONTEXT is also the explanation of why FB's own "social ads", and similar attempts on MySpace, etc. have monetized much, much worse than even internet average. Once people are in a certain context, it's difficult to yank them out of it.
And for the same reasons I would guess that the opening up of Facebook search (presumably still honoring people's privacy settings) is well behind Twitter's potential for monetizing search: Since most people aren't Internet Marketers or Social Media hounds, they are pretty unlikely to open up their profiles to public Google search (for SEO reasons etc.) OR Facebook Search. If you all of a sudden send them "Track"-based solicitations/spam they will freak out (beyond the current "Social ads" which FB users rapidly train themselves to ignore).
On Twitter, there basically has never been such a supposition of privacy, indeed, it tends to attract those that do not mind, do not care, or WANT to overshare... :) Incidentally, Facebook's by now massive adoption/size makes it so that any attempts/missteps in the way you describe might be greeted by howls that quickly reach into every corner of the internet.
Only 1% of 170 Million is still 1.7 Million users. If they make their displeasure known (as they just did with the rather wonkish/innocuous TOS issue), Facebook will likely be on the defensive every single time.
I don't see how Twitter itself is going to shift, but I see that the user base on twitter Wants to share more intimate details with each other. The main limitation from my personal experience is limited discussion space. Sharing intimate details takes a great deal of effort in 140 characters.
"This kind of customer intimacy will be far more prevalent over on Facebook because WE are far more intimate there."
This doesn't seem clear to me. I see far more opportunity for customer intimacy in the Twitter environment (today). On a platform like twitter (and FriendFeed it would appear) there is the opporunity to view the public stream and respond to questions, comments, observations about your brand. This doesn't happen in the Facebook/Myspace model nearly as easily, simply due to the privacy.
If Facebook develops a more public realm within, then the opportunity for customer intimacy will be there.
The opportunity for "intimate advertising" is in the Facebook model. In that realm I can target my advertising, and in fact get my customers to do most of it for me though recommendations, ratings and so on, that just aren't possible in the current environment on Twitter. All that's possible in the current raw form of Twitter is raw communication.
But what happens when developers start generating apps that run on top of the Twitter platform - apps that just use the 140 char stream for the transport/protocol communications layer - and deliver the (mobile) user a totally different experience, which has nothing to do with the communications that reside on twitter now. I wonder IS twitter going to support that? If so, how are they going to segment the streams to allow for data security. I submit that Bill Gurley is right regarding the gaming model that supports TenCent. This is one of the things that is likely to drive Twitter monetization if they can deliver that to developers. To be sure, games are already being discussed that use Twitter as the base platform.
How much more are the game app developers making per (game) user than either Facebook OR Myspace is making on their per user scale? I understand at least one of the big social gaming companies to be profitable already.
And now that you've considered Twitter as the transport layer for mobile application development, NOW who wins in customer intimacy? And more importantly, who wins the Data Gold Mine battle? And most importantly perhaps, which one is going to show better margins on that data?
Facebook has barriers to entry in the application API - frankly I don't see the same barrier to entry in the non-API, simple protocol model that could run on Twitter.
Keyword based advertising might work better on Facebook, in the same way it works for Gmail. But as soon as Facebook start selling the data to advertisers and allow direct engagement, people will stop using Facebook for anything intimate.
http://twitter.com/spryka
And that the moment they realize that posting "having a baby shower at the Hyatt" will bring a torrent of advertisers on their head, they'll stop posting those sort of details.
It's wishful thinking to believe that these sorts of interactions will get us only the sort of really useful targeted offers we'd welcome. Because Twitter (and Facebook, for that matter) are still in their nascency, your tweet about the Luxor got you a useful offer from the Luxor. Period. Fast forward a couple of years, and you'll be hearing from everyone in Vegas from taxi companies to tour guides to escort services. Not to mention anyone and everyone who's ticked off "send my ads to people who stay at hotels" - luggage manufacturers, travel insurance... you get the picture.
It's going to take more than a bit of convincing to get everyone on FB to accept even the sort of keyword ads Barnes suggests. With millions of newcomers who are unfamiliar with the whole notion of social networks and social media, there's a lot of hand-holding to do to convince them that there's nothing evil about Facebook tracking their status updates and wall posts.
People are Tweeting DURING CHILDBIRTH. Famous people, too.
http://www.theinsider.com/news/1628805_Erykah_B...
That rapper that works with MSTRKRFT Twitter while performing on Jimmy Kimmel live a while back.
I think it's really funny that people compare Twitter vs. Facebook at all. You're comparing a messaging platform vs. a full-featured social network. Twitter subsumes all of the important functions of Twitter (besides public search). In the near future, Facebook Connect will become one of the most important aspects of FB, IMHO. Why do people think that Twitter to Facebook this is an apples-to-apples comparison?
Lucky them.