What I don't get is whenever newspeople speak about commentary on news-story they refer to the "social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook" and it always bothers me that they treat the two as if they are interchangeable. I know they have similarities but after a few years of both of them sucking up billions of kilowatts of bandwidth they've both been able to find their place on the wonderful world of the interwebs but it's time to identify what each is good at and what they are not.
Twitter's value is two parts: instant 'news' and celebrity worship.
The big issue to me is that Twitter isn't the starting portal for most people and quite frankly I don't see many people going to Twitter.com or any of the other mobile options after they do log on. People who are avid tweeters do but the average Joe Schmo just doesn't have the time or care to post their tweets and surely aren't checking to see what their friends are tweeting either. I have noticed that most people with Twitter accounts have 100 people they follow although the people they follow hardly ever tweet and very often they themselves don't have a single post to their name. For the very average person it very quickly becomes the falling tree in the forest scenario, whether you tweet or not doesn't cause any waves cause nobody is watching.
Now that doesn't make it a bad concept or website but it doesn't really promote interaction.. What does makes Twitter good is when a guy at a football practice is able to tell you Tom Brady sprained his knee in practice and is also an excellent source to get scoop news from an insider in Washington DC..
It's second value is the Celebrity Worship where people follow the likes of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Nicky Hilton. I have no idea what the appeal to this is but apparently there is a market for this.
Just this week when Woody Johnson's lesbian daughter died, the Daily News posted the tweet that her bisexual fiance Tila Tequila posted. It was some shorthand garble about seeing each-other in heaven but the entire time I was thinking, who the hell ever checks Tila Tequila's tweets? There can't be a less interesting person in this world to follow than her but because she's been on a couple of celebrity dating shows she apparantely has a boat-load of followers. Overall I don't care that much to be the first to hear whether Chris Dodd will not run for re-election or what Paris Hilton had for lunch so for me Twitter does nothing. Plus honestly all the @ things are annoying as hell.
Now Facebook has it's own issues and it doesn't seem to be a very good source for real news and luckily for most people is not used for celebrity worship.
The irony is that the 'status update' and Facebook Newsfeed have quickly become what Twitter hoped to become: mini-blogs which are mostly stream-of-consciousness posts by 'real people' to their social circle. It works because Facebook is already a portal for most people so it's one of many things to do while Twitter is a site somebody has to remember to go to.
The Status Updates also allows other people to comment in a much less clumsy way than the @ thing Twitter does, so Facebook does Twitter better than Twitter. Now Facebook has it's issues and you know that TOR has rallied against the very mundane and boring 'status updates' that some Facebook Friends insist on posting like the girl who will send updates like
sitting on the couch with my dog
just had a big dinner
going to Erica's partyThere should be some kind of Facebook police sheriff who suspends people who post what they had for lunch. It's as if they aren't smart enough to understand the concept of the status update. All in all when it comes to social-networking Facebook is an effective way to stay in touch with just about anybody you have ever encountered, although I would happily delete 50% of my Facebook Friends I do think it's a good method of staying in touch.
So in the Facebook vs Twitter war, I don't think there really is a lot of competition. Most people don't give a crap about Twitter but if used correctly seems to be a very effective information to get 'scoop' news and information while Facebook is the true social networking site
Agreed 100% here.
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