Why Twitter will be bigger than Facebook

Facebook is a haven for those who love to endlessly forward jokes and junk in email. I joined because people at work asked me to, a few times.

Twitter is useless if you don’t have a phone. I don’t and won’t get one. I don’t want to live like I’m on call 24 hours a day.

I don’t use either of those sites. But I love Flickr!

Ha! Between the two, Twitter is the fad. I’ve had an account for a long time now and find it completely useless for my life. On the other hand, Facebook offers apps like We’re Related and dozens of others that have specific applicability to me and are useful far beyond what Twitter has to offer.

To each his own…just don’t bet the farm on Twitter. Think Second Life.

I don’t get Twitter. I prefer to IM one person at a time at most. In my view Twitter is for young people with active social lives to let their friends know what’s happening. Anything else is just annoying. “Teehee, I’m off to Walmart to buy toilet paper!” Who gives a f**k whether Turnip twitters that, Graham twitters that, or John Chow twitters that? Is there anything so profound being said that you couldn’t read it on someone’s blog? I suppose a bunch of you Twittering birds flock together and visit each other’s blogs, but really, the next big thing? Give me a break.

I agree with Turnip. I just don’t get the point of Twitter.

Actually, if I could dream a little, it would be nice to see my story go viral via Digg and SU,

Frankly, I use Facebook more for Scrabulous than anything else.
I’ve never seen the attraction of Twitter, but then I’m not trying to contact everyone in Silicon Valley, either.
I think each service has its uses, its fans, and its detractors, just like Entrecard!

You had me at the title, Graham, and hit the electronic nail on its interconnected head. I *do* feel THIS way.. I became “coffeesister” online 15 years ago & never have used AOL or Facebook but DO use both Entrecard & Twitter! I don’t use Twitter on my phone nor am I chatting with multiple people. I *am* able to get updates via Google Chat from those of my choosing & can (& most certainly do) check in with Twitter.com/coffeesister at ANY time; finding excellent advice, article/post recommendations, breaking news (Twitter.com/cnn) & – of course – friends.

Through Twitter, I’ve had a post listed on ProBlogger, received a compliment from the founder of eBay & been able to send a message to the founder of Entrecard. ~_^ It surprises me that Entrecard users, whom clearly appreciate the value of networking, can’t see the ease with which Twitter is providing it in yet a more interactive way. Given who you choose to follow, it can be a mini mentoring experience or simply an interesting stream of info (Twitter.com/OnThisDay & Twitter.com/NASA). Like Entrecard, it can be used in whatever way fits each users needs & the benefits are only starting to be realized.

|_|) “Communication–the human connection–is the key to personal and career success.” ~ Paul J. Meyer

Twitter works well as a social networking platform only if you have lots of followers or if everyone in your circle is following you. Also, as mentioned in a previous comment, you need to have easy access to a Twitter client, independent of your physical location, for it to be truly useful.

I like Twitter. Twitter can be dopey, but it is also a fantastic way to brand, retain relationships of any kind and play. It’s a PR tool–personal, business, blog, whatever, and it is worth figuring out. Any other benefits are incidental. It’s actually a very simple app that should just stay simple. Facebook’s undoing is its lofty goals, which are already crashing around privacy issues.

Twitter is CB Radio for bloggers.

They write about it because they can’t see the forest through the trees.

Twitter has it’s own privacy issues. Google your @twittername some time. Scared?

Now trying Googling for some of your Facebook wall postings.

Can’t find them can you. Now, tell me again which service has the privacy issue?

Twitter is poor at following conversations. You have to be a mind reader or use quotably (which sucks too) in an attempt to see the entire back and forth of the conversations. So as a “social network” I’d rate it sub-par – unless your idea of social is a lot of one-sided conversations.

Twitter also sucks at letting you find out who’s who. While Arrington may be a household name to star crossed blogger wannabes – he’s hardly recognizable to my mom and sister.

And it’s going to be people like my mom and sister — and their friends — who provide the fuel to propel Twitter to be bigger than Facebook.

I just don’t see this at all. Twitter’s riding the wave because bloggers write about it. Then they write about other bloggers writing about it. And so forth and so forth.

I’m not buying your argument. Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy using twitter — I’m just not seeing it as bigger than facebook in it’s current format.

@mas90guru

To be honest, the worthless dialogue some people associate with Twitter has also been said about blogs. It is what you make of it.

I was initially skeptical of Twitter & publicly stated as much.

Today, I use it to find, connect with & actually meet real people. Facebook? Junk apps, ridiculous friend requests, and dilution of purpose… the comparison to AOL in the mid-90s is dead-on. It is in the middle of jumping a $15billion shark. When it lands, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Twitter has an ecosystem building up around it, so the issues of search will be resolved. Privacy? Your public timeline, is.. um, public. This surprised you?

What’s the wager, I’m in.

Facebook – ALL college students join, every year. Appeals to MASS amounts of people who use it for ways you are clearly not aware of. Go spend more time at a public university and watch the student on campus using Facebook. It’ll blow your mind.

Twitter – Has minority appeal. Highly unlikely to reach the masses. Too time-consuming, and not enough benefits to appeal to average joes. Furthermore, and probably most importantly, to the average Internet user (who IS on facebook, by the way), Twitter is already an existing feature built into Facebook – called “status”.

Even in the Valley there are more Facebook users than Twitter users.

Just because the tech-elite love it doesn’t mean everyone does.

As a college student, my friends are on Facebook. They use it to organize events and whatnot. Other than that, it gets boring. None of my friends on FB have or get Twitter. The conversation occurs in person.

As a “web professional” and strategist I have found that the most interesting people I have never met are on Twitter. It is more web-based conversational than FB in that respect. I get value from the conversation relating to my interests.

To me, each has its place.

[...] Why Twitter Will Be Bigger Than Facebook (Graham) [...]

@Paul, just because right now everyone uses Facebook and nobody’s heard of twitter doesn’t mean anything.

Go back to September 04 and ask all those kids if they use Facebook. They wouldn’t even have heard of it!

We’re in the “September 04 of Twitter”

[...] will be bigger than Jesus Facebook. Except that Twitter doesn’t make any money. Or let people play [...]

heh. i agree and i agree w/polink: i do use my facebook to publish my tweets.

i hardly use my facebook though. 1 or 2 a week.

i didn’t get twitter at first. i’m not sure i get it now. but it took awhile to figure out it’s not crap. it was when i started following people who do converse that my twitter experience became rich.

twitter is hard to figure out because it can be different for everybody. depending on who you choose to follow. i’ve met a lot of interesting people on twitter. i’ve learned a lot from those people and continue to be amazed at the level of intelligence there is.

twitter for me is a place like digg where i get a lot of links. but it is also a place where people do converse with each other. It’s like irc… one big giant chatroom in the cloud and much more. when a tweet becomes a conversation— then it becomes really useful. i’ve had it happen a number of times. i also know that it is a great marketing tool and often i purposely follow those kinds of twitters because their stuff interests me.

sometimes the topic is about the mundane. sometimes it isn’t. but you don’t have read through all your tweets.

it’s ok to miss tweets. sure there’s lot of crap, but when twitter shines, it’s hotter than the sun. i also have this personal rule: if you follow me, i’ll follow you. has worked so far.

Graham,

Very interesting discussion and resulting feedback. As an active twitterer, I agree with all of your points. Twitter is much more engaging and easier to interact with. However, Facebook’s recent announcement of chat though, is a game changer, http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/04/facebook-chat-launches-this-week/.

I think it is a direct challenge to Twitter and will enable Facebook members to interact directly with their friends in the walled garden ala Twitter. Will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

@warrenss

I can’t say there’s many blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis, but yours is one of them. And for what it’s worth, we seem to find value in the same things. I knew, from the get-go, that Twitter was going to be huge… not due to any extreme sophistication but because it was such a no-brainer that tapped directly into the down-time between a person’s online interactions. It allows people with not much to do to feel as if they are in a big pool with people who DO have something to do and, in that zero-attention space where the mind is just wandering around looking for something into which it can sink its hooks, there’s Twitter – offering an unlimited number of potential candidates.

Here is the first article I ever wrote on Twitter

I then forewent all the other internet marketing madness and wrote about Twitter for like the next 3 weeks… just like I did when I first heard about Entrecard… to give them both as big a boost as possible.

Keep ‘em comin’ Graham… I repeat that I sincerely wish the members here realize what a friendly, supportive, intelligent companion they have in you.

Sam

This is false by any measure. Gmail and Firefox have great penetration among Twitter users, but are not important with the Internet at large.

Have you got the numbers to back that up? Last spring I did a presentation re: Gmail and FF. Both of these are BLOWING UP. I think you underestimate the “Internet at large”.

I used to dismiss twitter as a dumb fad and I signed up at the urging of my brother. I posted in it once and that was that…until a year later.

I then found out that a lot of bloggers and vloggers are using it heavily to promote, network and have fun.

Now I don’t think that twitter is going to replace facebook anytime soon. I’ve been on facebook when it was only for college students. If you look past all of the apps and privacy issues (which I don’t care about anyway.) Facebook is still a relevant and robust site.

I use it to link to classmates and co-workers who may not be interested in twitter. Now it would be smart if Facebook or another company bought twitter because it does have the potential to be big, but not to replace facebook.

[...] on the “yay” team we’ve got folks like Graham Langdon blogging for EntreCard claiming Twitter will overtake [...]

Twitter and Facebook suck. I use both. I use Facebook more because it offers more of what I, as a University student, need:

- a place for photos
- a way to set up and be invited to events

Twitter would be more popular in places like China where all they do is text. Twitter is the creepy kind of social that won’t be “more popular” than Facebook because there is zero privacy to it – I don’t want guys in Egypt asking me to marry them. This used to happen to me on Facebook – fortunately, I can block anyone and everyone I don’t know. (Being a female University student means you’re targeted like mad.)

Anywho, I agree that people will eventually become more discriminatory but I think that they will glaze over Twitter and go for something a little more useful. It’s funny to read that someone’s in their bathroom, watching snow fall, but there’s no real value that the site offers. And if there *is* value, it’s too small to work.

[...] Langdon at Entrecard, makes the argument that Twitter will beat Facebook in the battle for Social Media Space. I agree [...]

[...] apps and tools seem to be to be launching daily. Graham Langdon at the Entrecard Blog lately blogged (via Adrants) that Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. Useful applications and tools created next [...]

[...] Twitter apps and tools appear to be launching daily. Graham Langdon at the Entrecard Blog just now blogged (via Adrants) that Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. Useful applications and tools created next [...]

[...] Also, Graham over at Entrecard takes the position on the other end, going so far as to declare that Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. (color me [...]

I think it is a challenge to Twitter. And in my view Twitter is for people with active social lives to let their friends know what’s happening.

Godo night, bloggers =)

Frankly, I use Facebook more for Scrabulous than anything else.
I’ve never seen the attraction of Twitter, but then I’m not trying to contact everyone in Silicon Valley, either.
I think each service has its uses, its fans, and its detractors, just like Entrecard!