Web Toastie

Apparently Twitter is “a waste of time”, “nobody uses it” and you are “better off using something like Facebook”, according to one Digital Point forum user. This comment may be good advice for a 13 year old, but if you are looking to interact with professionals, you may want to learn a bit more about Twitter’s benefits.

The following are five reasons why Twitter is not the same as Facebook.

• Simplicity – Twitter’s clutter-free pages draw the focus solely on communication, resulting in fast loading pages that encourage users to participate.

• Message – As any good copywriter will tell you, getting your message across effectively is key, and being limited to 140 characters forces people to keep messages short and sweet.

• Exposure – The real-time search functionality of Twitter provides instant results from the thousands of different users. This means that when somebody ‘tweets’, their message isn’t just seen by their circle of friends, but potentially the entire Twitter network.

• Audience – The nature of Twitter’s ability to share information seemingly appeals more towards professionals, resulting in companies such as Ford and Samsung actively using it to interact with users. Although Facebook allows businesses to have a social presence, the level of interaction is limited.

• Results – Are real-time results the future of online search? Who knows, but Twitter has certainly cornered the market in real-time search. Through the use of Twitter’s search facility, you can not only find people, but also search through users’ updates to find instant results.

The above five points are just a few of the many differences between the two websites, but if you would like to remember them, a handy acronym is ‘SMEAR’ (unintentional, I promise).

The comparisons people make between Twitter and Facebook are completely irrelevant a lot of the time. Even though they both essentially have a similar purpose, they are hugely different in the specifics of what they can do.

People may say “it’s not Facebook” when trying to dismiss Twitter, but that is exactly correct; it isn’t Facebook. With the recent aquisition of FriendFeed, it would seem Facebook actually wants to be more like Twitter – but I’ll save that for somebody else to discuss.

What is your favourite social media website? Do you think Twitter is the next big search engine? Your comments are welcome as always.