Facebook is Mac, Twitter is PC

It takes a while for new technologies to gain a foothold on the consumer psyche so that it can be understood better by those yet to be initiated into the holy church of social media.

And so it is with Facebook and Twitter, two of the newest stars that champion such buzz terms as Web 2.0, social media, interactive community, anon.

Yet—for all the M&A chatter and tech guru hype—once you get past explaining to your Mom that both platforms are used to stay in touch with groups, friends, or colleagues, the best answer to the next question, “which is better?” is simply “Facebook is Mac, and Twitter is PC.”

Then they get it.

- Facebook is graphical; Twitter mimics a command line interface
- Facebook makes room for verbose comments; Twitter limits Tweets to 140 characters, including spaces, about the length of this bullet point.
- Facebook is leisurely and multi-layered while Twitter appears frantic and shallow.

You get the picture. But there’s even more evidence for this quickdraw metaphor from recent press clippings.

First, Tech Crunch recently posted an Abrams Research Survey that showed that Twitter was considered better for business than Facebook, according to user preferences. And in fact, I tell my clients to use Twitter to listen to what people are saying about their brand.

On top of that, we learn that Facebook is a runaway hit in France. So? Well many of the young social media turks now marking up the Internet weren’t even around 25 years ago when Apple’s original Macintosh was all the rage in France. It’s happening again.

Tell me if that does or doesn’t convince you!

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