by sam“I don’t really understand Twitter. “I don’t need Twitter.” “I don’t even want to talk to celebrities.” These are just some of the things you sometimes hear when trying to get your friends to sign up and start tweeting. Facebook seems to have everything you need for sharing things with your friends, but is it the ultimate social network?
Facebook has our social life all in one place. In one simple online format that we all know and love, we can do everything. We’ve got every photo we were ever in right there in chronological order; we’ve got almost everyone we’ve ever met a click away, and we can see what all our friends and family are talking about. So yes, “you don’t need Twitter.”.
But since when did we settle for just what we needed? Twitter opens up your social network to the world. What if someone you don’t know agrees with your message, finds you funny, and wants to tell their friends? With Twitter, this is possible. Twitter can allow a real movement or cause to spread within seconds across the world. Using it simply brings about more opportunities and content to consume, and it allows you access to where things are being talked about as they happen. It’s a 24-hour news show where everyone is the reporter. This is not just an advancement in online marketing but an advancement in communication in general. We didn’t need the internet; we had papers, but now we can’t live without it.
As Google Plus enters the market of major social media players in a bid to knock Facebook off its perch, are we entering an online world with multiple platforms, or do we have to choose one and stick with it? With the social network battle heating up, the stats show Twitter uses have soared, reportedly by up to a third following the recent super injunction saga. Google+ looks like it will iron out the kinks that Facebook has: an overload of annoying apps, the fact that your family can see your clubbing pictures, an overload of event notifications, and daily ‘Happy Birthday xx’ messages. So there is no reason why people won’t consign Facebook to Myspace’s fate, is there?
Twitter also has its downsides, most notably if you are a celebrity sports personality who doesn’t want his or her private life discussed in public. There are also several spam accounts and, arguably, pointless trending topics. However, like Facebook, it is hard to say that Twitter will not continue to have such a huge social and economic impact on our lives soon, whether you use one or the other, or if you are optimising both.