Facebook Versus Twitter

WHICH IS BETTER?

Okay, so a few friends and I were having a long winded debate on which was a better social networking website: Facebook or Twitter. They are the two most popular social networks in the world, although there is a great deal of arguments on which website is significantly better than the other. I personally am not a fan of Twitter and much prefer the look of Facebook, however many of my friends would disagree - so why is that?
As a result I have decided to construct a balanced argument, outlining comparisons of the two considering their strengths and weaknesses, user base and features.

As of March 2014 Facebook has over 1.28 billion monthly active users since its launch in February 2004, whereby over half of whom use the mobile app devise. It is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and is owned and operated by Facebook, INC, who base their headquarters in Menlo Par, California, United States and has 6,818 employees as of this year. It is available world wide with the support of 70 different languages installed onto the system, which is written in C++, PHP, D. Facebook is a multi-purpose platform that allows users to post photos, instant message, post comments and play games.
With over 500 million users Twitter is an online microblogging and social networking service that was founded by Jack Dorsey and launched on July 6, 2006, basing their headquarters in San Francisco, California, United States and have 3,000 employees as of 2014. This social networking site is available in 29 different languages and is written in JavaScript, Ruby, Scala, Java. The purpose of Twitter is based on enabling users to speak their mind by writing short text-based messages, also known as 'tweets' of up to 140 characters.

There are a number of similarities and differences that connect and identify both social networking sites as they are both used for different purposes. Facebook is mainly used stay connected with, or reconnect with people you know in real life. Users can communicate with others by posting messages on other peoples 'wall', as well as maintain a personal profile that others can view and comment on things that have been posted. Twitter is mainly used to post short up-to-date statuses and follow others with similar interests regardless of whether users know one another offline. It enables users to follow updates from celebrities as well as friends and send private messages to people they follow. One similarity both sites share is that they both require you to Register an account using your email and create a username and password. They also both allow users to upload photographs, post updates, reblog posts, share links and 'follow' people.
Another feature that both sites share is Privacy, Both Facebook and Twitter allows their users to make their profiles private or public through going on the privacy settings. However Facebook's privacy settings is a little more advanced as it allows individuals to change the privacy settings of each individual post, allowing individuals to choose exactly who sees what they are posting, from friends only, the public, private or they can even 'custom' who views their posts. Whereas the privacy settings on Twitter are rather basic, whereby if their profile is private posts can only be viewed by people you have accepted can follow you and public profiles can be viewed by everyone. Twitter does not have the feature that allows individual posts to become private. Furthermore, both sites can be integrated. Tweets from your twitter account can be posted onto Facebook using the Twitter App so the two can be connected, as well as other sites may allow you to use your Facebook or Twitter log in details to set up accounts and some websites, like blogs, allow you to place a Twitter Widget onto the page to connect the two this way.

Chart to Show Growth in Worldwide User Base for Twitter v.s Facebook.

One of the major differences between Twitter and Facebook is that they are aimed at different groups of people. Those who actively post statuses on a regular basis would most likely favor Twitter, whereas those who want to chat with family or friends may opt for Facebook as it provides an instant messaging feature that Twitter does not have. Additionally to this the terminology for both sites are different, whereby those on Facebook can express their approval of content by 'liking' 'sharing' or 'commenting' on a post, whereas Twitter users can 'retweet' or 'favourite' content shared. Mentioning other users on the site is also different as Facebook requires you to only type the users name, while Twitter uses the @ sign before the individuals name to mention them in a post. Both sites, however, both support the # feature. Advertising is also portrayed differently on both sites as Twitter supports adverts through promoting tweets, while Facebook support adverts in the form of banners, ads or referral marketing. Finally, it is important to note that Facebook also supports a range of different games, while Twitter does not support this feature, while on the other hand this is due to Twitter being a much more useful resource for following trending topics and staying up to date with recent news, a feature that Facebook does not support.
All these reasons has lead to the conclusion that it depends on the personality and interests of the user regarding which site they find more useful as both sites serve different purposes. A quote I found particularly useful in describing the main difference is:

"People say that Facebook is for connecting with the people you went to school with and Twitter is for people you wished you had gone to school with". - www.diffen.com