Twitter vs Facebook: Which is best?

Twitter and Facebook are two of the most popular social networking sites that people across the world use today, with Twitter estimated to have 200 million users posting 65 million tweets per day, and Facebook estimated to have 600 million active members. But what are the relative advantages and disadvantages of each website for the user? In this article I will look at Twitter vs Facebook and explore the relative merits of each of the social networking sites.

Twitter has been nicknamed the “SMS of the internet” due to the fact that it is text based and you can only post up to 140 characters of information, which is known as “tweeting”. Users often use Twitter to tweet brief updates of what they are doing at any one time, this is known as “microblogging”.

Facebook users create their own personal profiles and add friends, who they communicate with through messages and automatic profiles updates. Facebook users can also join groups of users, such as people who go to the same college, or live in the same place, or become members or fans of specific people, teams, or even beliefs.

Twitter and Facebook accounts can be linked together so that posts are both tweeted on Twitter and posted on Facebook at the same time.

So which is best, Twitter or Facebook? I will give you what I believe to be the advantages of each social networking site and let you decide. Please feel free to add your own opinions in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

It is very easy to build up social networks in Twitter as you can quickly build up “followers” (people who read your tweets) and people that you “follow”.

Twitter is fast moving, provided you follow a certain amount of people, the updates are constant and you need never get bored.

Twitter lends itself to hooking up with new people and groups as well as people that you already know.

Twitter can be good for finding out information such as what’s on in your local area, through following local businesses or organizations for example.

Twitter is much better than Facebook for advertising specific events, products, or charities than Facebook as it is easier to reach more people quicker.

Twitter is good for promoting single issues or products, if necessary by setting up multiple accounts. For instance, you might have one personal Twitter account, one for the blog that you write, and one for the products that your business sells.

It is much easier to be anonymous on Twitter, if that is what you wish for. You can just create a nickname or pseudonym and not reveal your real name.

There are lots of fun Twitter apps that you can play around with.

Facebook tends to be more private than Twitter with the culture leaning more towards people befriending people that they already know. The default setting in Twitter, however, is that anyone can read your updates.

It is much more easy to have meaningful discussions or debates in Facebook, with Twitter you are limited to the 140 character rule.

You can post photos directly in Facebook and put together galleries, whereas with Twitter you can only link to one photo at a time.

Facebook is more personal than Twitter as you can post biographical details about yourself, photos, your tastes in music and movies etc, whereas Twitter has much less profile space and tends to be less intimate.

You can generally track down old friends through Facebook easier, as people usually use their real names, and you find them through looking at friends of friends.

You can write longer passages of text in Facebook through the “notes” function, which gives you much more scope to express more detailed ideas in writing.

You can watch videos, view photos, etc on Facebook directly, without having to follow links to other websites.

There are lots of fun games on Facebook, such as Farmville that you can play

In my experience, as a tweeter, Twitter is good for promoting something such as a blog, or a product, or a news service to a lot of people, many of whom you might not know very well. You can keep people informed of latest developments etc. but you probably aren't going to get into deep discussions with people. As a tweet reader, Twitter is great for finding out about and keeping in touch with updates, news, services, and making new contacts with people or services.

Facebook, on the other hand, is best for keeping in contact with a relatively small amount of people, often family and friends and people that you know reasonably well. It is not so good for meeting or reaching people you don't know, but can reinforce existing relationships and help to keep you in contact.