If you’ve ever tried to explain to a friend the difference between their Facebook status and Twitter, tell them it’s the community.
There are tons of social networks to hop aboard these days. From Facebook to Myspace to Twitter to Friendfeed to Bebo to Identi.ca to Plurk. There’s almost too many to name and most certainly too many to try out. They all seem like the same thing anyways, right? Wrong! Wrong, wrong, WRONG! Here are a few points that help social networks separate themselves from one another:
- Community
- Conversations of the Community
- Content
- Feature-Set
Community & Conversations
The community is the key to separating social networks. The difference between a Facebook status update and a tweet, is the difference between apples and oranges; though they’re grouped in the same category, you just can’t compare them. Twitter is all about making conversations happen. However, the majority of these conversations revolve around some type of content: a YouTube video, an article, a blog post, a picture, a new service or web app. This helps to create conversations based on opinions. We review services and apps with our tweets. We review brands, companies, writers, and more. We share our thoughts and interests in the conversations via Twitter. Technology is a consistently popular topic along with politics.
- On the other hand, the Facebook community tends to have more intimate and personal conversations. Users share memories via pictures, moments via videos, and experiences with close friends and family via status updates. The community behind Facebook makes the entire experience a lot more personal and intimate than the community backing Twitter.
Content
The content between both networks are normally different too. Twitter’s content is centered around links and topics of interests to a diverse group of users. Facebook’s content is centered around images and personal details. The content is very different and rarely overlaps.
Feature-Set
The feature-set of both social networks also enforces different behavior. Though both are tools for communication, you should be aware that different tools can create different reactions, especially when integrated with the right user interface. Facebook promotes more personal and intimate relationship building features such as games, image and video uploads, groups.
- Twitter doesn’t have a group feature yet. It’s designed to make you pay attention to your entire audience, which is normally full of people you wouldn’t want to share your most personal details with. So instead, we share links to things of interests. This is just another way to help establish a connection & to network with professionals according to your interests, instead of your personal life.
The Difference Is In The Community
In the end, there all very different. The difference lies in the community; with what they share, what they say, and how they interact.
