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!
SEO PR and Social Media at the crossroads
I blogged this article on Troubled Tech concepts and business models that probably won’t make it much further into the future at Halfway To Concord.
This is a serious issue for SEO PR as it will affect the growing role and value of social media in the SEO PR workflow.
I especially agree with the the analysis of microblogs (Twitter), social news sites (digg), online video (youtube wannabes), enterprise social networking.
Sorry. I just don’t get Twitter in its current metamporphisis. In the meantime it may be a good place to listen for chatter about your brand. Digg, Delicious, and Stumbleupon are a playground for mischief and gaming. The Belkin debacle is just the tip of the iceberg as black hat experts game such platforms to get their news some traction.
Gaming social news media platforms produces what? Reliable news? More eyeballs? I’m not sure. In this model social media reduces PR to gaming the platform by finding the gatekeeper bloggers that have managed to become BMOCs that are also gaming the system.
From the viewpoint of Integrated Marketing Communications, is this really the way you want various stakeholders to interact with your brand. At some point, companies need to decide if and how they will protect the integrity of their brands in relation to social media news sites.