Facebook vs. Twitter: Why choose?
Wednesday’s announcements that Google would be pairing up with Twitter, while Yahoo! hitched its wagon to Facebook makes sense from a business perspective. Suddenly Google and Yahoo! have ins with the social crowd — something Google in particular has wanted for sometime — while Twitter and Facebook get significant value-ads to their networks.
But the idea that there’s a coming “war among [W]eb identity giants” (as Joseph Tartakoff so deftly put it) really worries me from a consumer standpoint. Tying each social network to a rival content group feels hasty, because it encourages this very 20th century idea that Facebook and Twitter are rival brands and everyone needs to choose. It’s not Coke and Pepsi. You can drink both at the same time. The two platforms serve very different functions, and it’s silly to pretend anyone can get by with one or the other. Or that your choice should be based on which search engine you prefer. You need both — and several other networks besides — if you’re really going to compete in the social space.
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Posted by Mark Smith on December 4th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Interesting development. I agree with you that ultimately this battle of the networks is detrimental to the user experience. Users want to be able to seamlessly glide from one network to another. From statements the company has made, I like Wadja.com’s open source philosophy which is taking its own 5 million user community one step further . It already allowed for its users to sign up using their own Twitter accounts for a long time, and as I understand it, will open it up to both Facebook and Google, as well as other identities allowing open access to their unique Wadja labels feature, and eliminating the need for multiple logins to a variety of networks. As long as Facebook and Twitter are battling it out, they’ll miss out on where the industry is really heading and what consumers are demanding.
Posted by Planetwebfoot on December 8th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I also agree with you, Twitter and Facebook serve two very different purposes and in the end it hurts the user/consumer when they are battling it out. Social networking is not about drawing lines but its about allowing individuals to come together and communicate in a maninful way and doing it as seamlessly as possible.