The debate on Facebook versus Twitter, and which one is in for the long haul will continue. So far, some information nuggets I found particularly interesting include:

Twitter versus Facebook: Should you Choose One?

Twitter Pros: Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything, Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends

Facebook Pros: Application mashup; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc., Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM

Facebook vs. Twitter: How will you stream your world?

.. Facebook’s advantage is that the revamped news feed can handle different types of content, too: it’ll have actual photos and event listings instead of TwitPic and TinyURL links. Filtering controls won’t require a third-party app like TweetDeck. On the other hand, Twitter is obviously more open-ended. The messages on it are public and accessible, rather than hidden behind a log-in wall. As useful and innovative as the Facebook news feed may be, it’s not searchable–and Twitter clearly hopes that its search feature, which it built in with the acquisition of Summize last year, will be a sort of secret sauce.

Honestly, though, with the amount of buzz about both Facebook and Twitter as the future of real-time information, I give the advantage to whichever one can make all this content less of a mess.

When Do You Use Twitter Versus Facebook?

If I want to connect with someone I don’t know, either for business, social, or personal reasons, I first look the person up on Twitter.

Lets face it, there is nothing quite like Twitter for breaking news.

Twitter could be seen as one massive introduction system, where users recommend other users both through retweeting and mentioning the person using the @username option.

More of my Facebook friends live closer to me geographically than those who follow me on Twitter.

If I am trying to connect with someone that I know, I am more apt to use Facebook, if I know the person uses both Facebook and Twitter.

If I am looking for feedback on an issue, particularly personal, I am more apt to post it on Facebook.

Facebook vs. Twitter (infographic)  (RT? via? flickr)

How can they compare Twitter as a “competitor” of Facebook? They aren’t in the same category! One is a sprawling social network, while the other is just a microblogging tool.

As features converge on these two social networks, these speculative debates, and eventual reality will get really interesting. Though I have my own subjective take on the topic, I decided to get as far as objective I could get, through an experiment on Pickfu via the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). On the AMT sample, as of today:

• 14% of users prefer Twitter, while 86% prefer Facebook (Update: Thanks Matt)
• Twitter is more popular in the older demographics
• Twitter users are more affluent
• Twitter users are better educated

As part of this experiment, I also requested the turkers to comment on their choice, as to why they preferred one over the other. Here’s a tag-cloud of their responses, first for facebook:

and next for twitter:

In general, most of these comments on an aggregate, confirm those seen in blog postings, blog comments, and also studies carried out by large market research firms. Here’s my take-away though: AMT provides an interesting new perspective, for cheap.

Update: The comment below made me dig into raw text responses further. What I uncovered though, again, is the very motivation to computational social media research, and related conferences (see ICWSM 2010). I’ll leave out further analysis as a future exercise, and comment on them in follow-up posts. For now, I highlight a few representative user comments (as-is with misspellings etc.), not all of which I agree with.

Turkers who preferred twitter over facebook, point out the following (in their own words):

• Twitter moves faster and is more about people dealing with events.
• I think twitter is less pretentious and more user friendly
• Gives me an excuse to input limited number of words. Short & Quick!
• easy access and user friendly
• At the moment less malware.
• In my opinion Facebook is just a fad.
• newer, hip, quicker
• It’s  more informative while being less time consuming.
• i like twitter because I follow some shows on tv and radio, thanks.
• I find facebook is quite a commitment and once you’re in, you ‘can’t get out’, so to speak. Twitter is a more relaxed community, and you can leave without being bugged about it.
• Twitter is simpler and has much less dangers associated with it. Easier to use. Does not collect your information as much as facebook does.
• Twitter is more easily accessible to me.  I really enjoy the simplicity of it - don’t feel overwhelmed with all the this and that and the other thing that clutters up facebook.

On the other-side, turkers preferring facebook over twitter, say:

• I don’t like twitter’s concept, I don’t care about reading people’s statuses. I’d rather see photos and have more of an interaction than unnecessary details on a person’s day.
• There is more to do on FB than twitter.
• More friends there.
• I like seeing more info on facebook, and can still ‘chat’ there.
• I use facebook to keep in contact with friends at different colleges, but I have no use for twitter
• Facebook has more functionality
• Because they layout is prettier and it seems like their are more options and gadgets to play around with all on one site.
• My network of friends is mostly on facebook, not twitter.
• It’s older so I’m more used to Facebook than to Twitter, plus it has more applications.
• I use Facebook quite often. I have never used Twitter and most likely won’t because Facebook offers the same service as Twitter and so much more.
• There is more to do on Facebook.
• I preface facebook because it’s more personal. Twitter seems more “gossip oriented” and focused on boring details that I don’t care about.
• I don’t usually post my own statuses.
• I hate Twitter, I think people on it think the are too self important. No one cares what you are dong at all times.
• Twitter is basically status updates - not interested. I prefer seeing people’s photos and like facebook better for staying in touch.
• fcaebook has a lot of things to do and is more entertaining than twitter
• there is more to read on facebook
• Facebook has more features, and more people I know are on facebook than twitter, though I love twitter’s simplicity, and would hate for it to become more complicated.
• Less irrelevant junk, i.e. I am going to mow the lawn today. Better pictures.
• Its a social netwirk with more informative info and the best way to search and communicate with friends and family
• At least with facebook you get to see pictures of your friends too.
• Facebook is more interactive than twitter.
• You can communicate more often and more information with Facebook.
• I like this site because I can show pictures.
• more personilized
• More to do on facebook - I like seeing my friends’ photos and profiles rather than just following celebrities, which doesn’t really interest me.
• I never use twitter at all.  The whole concept of twitter is just plain dumb.
• Because it is not limited to status updates.
• I prefer Facebook because you can have a more detailed profile.
• Facebook provides me varios applications and surveys which are very funny and intresting
• I am more likely to connect with old friends and family members who live far away. Twitter is good for marketing and networking. Facebook is better for maintaining relationships.
• It helps me keep in touch with my friends — more of them are on Facebook than Twitter.
• my friend use this site.
• Because most of my friends are on Facebook, they don’t use Twitter, and I get charged for every text message.
• I like the mutlitude of applications therein.
• It is more established, I am more used to using it, and everyone I know has an account on it
• Most of my friends use facebook and it also has a lot more features like photos and communities.
• I only know 2 people on twitter whereas almost all my friends have a facebook account.
• I am simply more familiar with facebook and find it easier to use.
• I like its functionality and i have more friends at facebook
• I understand more about how it works, and I’m not interested in minute by minute byplays of someone’s day.
• I find the interface quite user friendly as compared to twitter
• It has more number of features than on Twitter and is more user-friendly. People get to interact more in facebook than in twitter.
• I prefer facebook over twitter because I have more friends on facebook.I also like the apps. i can send to friends on facebook.
• Most of my friends, school mates and most of the people i know use facebook to keep in touch with each other. And plus they had nag me to join facebook for a very long time.
• Facebook doesn’t limit the length of posts. I still get to keep up on my friends.  Twitter seems….narcissistic.  Nobody is so fascinating I need to know what they are doing umpteen times a day.
• I like both sites, but I mainly use Twitter for news updates and Facebook for social interaction.  Because you can see the comments directly linked to people’s posts it is more user friendly than twitter.
• I dislike the concept of divulging personal information on the internet, but facebook seems more secure than twitter and does not overwhelm me with useless information about the day to day lives of people. Twitter is just TOO much. I would rather not know the little unnecessary details about peoples lives.
• I prefer facebook because it allows for more depth as far as information that can be about me and my friends. Twitter is very shallow.
  because it can satisfide me rgarding c0mmunicating my friends, and i can enjoy it well.
• Twitter seems entirely self-involved and mostly inane. Facebook at least makes it easy to share interesting links, pictures, have longer discussions, etc.
  I prefer the interaction I can have with other people on FB (in comparison to just commenting on someone’s twitter update), am too busy, and not interested enough to comment on my every move (via Twitter), and I don’t know enough people who actually use Twitter to find in necessary to have an account with.
• Most of my friends and relatives are also on facebook where we all share photos.
• More established and already around a while.  Twitter still seems like an overhyped product.  Facebook also seems more ‘warm’ where Twitter seems more laden with commercialism and restaurants offering coupons for saying they are good.
• Facebook offers much more ways of communication with friends.
• I like them both, actually. I use facebook for work and family (mostly family and friends) and twitter for work.
• Twitter is more for self-absorbed, egotistical people (elebrities) who really think everyone cares about what they’re doing every minute of the day.  FB offers more to do and more ways to communicate with friends
• I prefer Facebook as I can do much more with my account. I can poke my friends, challenge them to a quiz etc.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 7:26 pm