Facebook attracts people trying to reconnect with old family and friends members or find new friends online; the mashup of features like email, instant messaging, image and movie sharing, etc. feels familiar, while Twitter is a little bit harder to get your arms around at first.
Many people can very quickly understand how to use Facebook to connect to friends and family, using it to share thoughts, images, etc. Like MySpace but more geared to adults than teens, Facebook is a social networking Portal; beckoning you not to leave but rather to stick around and communicate within just the network.
Twitter alternatively, encourages you get ideals in byte-size chunks and make use of your updates as jumping off points to other places or just let others know what you’re up to at every given moment.
Why People Love Twitter
The usefulness of Twitter isn’t readily as obvious for some people as Facebook; though it might be more addictive once you obtain the hang of Tweeting; you receive more immediate responses and it seems to live anywhere between the worlds of email, instant messaging and blogging. Twitter encourages constant “linking out” to anywhere and, due to that, is more analogous to a pure search results; another way to find people and content all over the Net.
Twitter has quickly built brand awareness and also a loyal following, especially one of the technically adept; bloggers, online marketers, evangelists, basically anyone with something to advertise seem to find Twitter extremely valuable.
When asked why they love Twitter, users say like “I can ask a question and get an instantaneous response”. They desire the ability to “tap into the collective consciousness” of others about the network, bouncing ideas off others with whom they’d otherwise don’t have any means of connecting. Twitter addicts claim it’s such as the old-fashioned water cooler, where people can gather to shoot the breeze on whatever topic is on their own minds. Twitter is similar to a communications stream you dive into on an invigorating swim.
Why People Love Facebook
Facebook addicts like the social portal model versus using to log into AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Gmail, Hotmail, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, etc. Instead, Facebook provides them a simple alternate to all these applications, with one login and interface to control their online social interaction needs. This largely explains the explosive growth Facebook continues to experience and why the organization reportedly invested $200 million in data center upgrades recently to maintain demand!
Facebook attracts social animals and will be very addicting to persons who have an insatiable appetite to stay connected together with friends and produce new acquaintances. In fact, a lot of people report they rarely use email or IM tools anymore in their online social communications anymore, relying almost entirely on Facebook for email, chat, image and video sharing.
A closer look at the numbers for 2010 [infographic]
Here’s an excellent granular breakdown comparison of Facebook vs. Twitter demographics developed by Digital Surgeons. There are several interesting little nuggets in here. It’s no real surprise that a higher percentage of Twitter users ‘update their status’ daily than Facebook, being that updating your status is the only way to actually use Twitter. For everyone you businesses out there, take notice of the reality 40% of all the people on Facebook follow a brand, and 51% of those people will actually buy a product or service from a specific brand. My questions is that these numbers will go up at least 50% by end of next year as companies get smarter and always re-prioritize how and why they do business.
Take a look at Chart.
Click on the Image for Larger View
