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| Image Source: http://vinova.sg/services |
Statistics from Nielsen has shown that users in the U.S. spend ‘906 million hours a month on social networks’ and there is a ‘43% increase’ reported between June 2009 and June 2010 (Martin, 2011). Among these social networks, there is no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are both currently the most popular social utilities used by millions of users around the globe.
Facebook is a social networking website that acts as a platform for users to stay in touch with their friends by allowing users to create personal profiles and interact via text, photos and videos. Twitter is a social network messaging systems that allows individuals to broadcast text messages of up to 140 characters to their followers.
Which exactly is better?
Apparently, the use of both these media do not conflict each other. As stated by Martin in her article(2011), Twitter is compared to’ Times Square on New Year’s Eve’ while Facebook is more like ‘a party invitation with an RSVP’.
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| Image Source: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/20/facebook-vs-twitter-an-infographic/ |
For better comparison, it is important to look at the 'infographic comparing the Facebook population to the Twitter population' by Digital Surgeons (Ingram, 2010). This set of data reveals that fact that although there are about 4 times more Facebook users than Twitter users, Twitter users are much more active than Facebook users. 52 percent of Twitter users update their status daily compared to only 12 percent of Facebook users.
This seems to point out the different usability of these two social network media and they still work hand-in-hand to complement each other in the present state.
References
Ingram, M, 2010, Facebook vs Twitter: An Infographic, Gigaom, Dec 20 2010. Available at: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/20/facebook-vs-twitter-an-infographic/ [viewed 17 Jan 2011]
Martin, C 2011, Facebook vs Twitter: Do You Have To Choose? , Forbes, Jan 3 2011. Available at: http://blogs.forbes.com/work-in-progress/2011/01/03/facebook-vs-twitter-do-you-have-to-choose-a-side/?boxes=Homepagechannels [viewed 17 Jan 2011]
