When comes to communicating now and days, it's almost impossible to disregard social media as not a primary forum of communication. Almost everyone uses some forum of social media in their day to day lives. As a whole, social media has allowed small companies, corporations, charities, friends and family to communicate with one another more efficiently than ever before. The two social media giants that you hear about day to day are Twitter and Facebook. While other forums of social media communication have risen such as Snap Chat, Instagram and so on and so forth, Twitter and Facebook are the most mainstream. But what makes these platforms different from one another?
When Facebook first started out, its purpose was for college graduates to be able to link up with fellow graduates and stay in touch. Sense then, it has become a massive online chat room that is filled with advertisements, games and fan pages of various causes, people or organizations. Unlike Twitter, on Facebook you're not limited to the amount of content that one can post at a single time. This can be a good or bad thing depending upon how one looks at it. Being able to say as much as you want really depends on the actual content. It seems that the content posted on Facebook has become a bunch of rambling people complaining about various issues. While if you do sit there and read in between the lines, one can figure out what a person is saying, it can sometimes be more difficult to understand. In addition, Facebook has grown to appeal to the more elder generations, which to some have become a turn off. More recently, Facebook has exploded into a gaming platform, so much so that it can often become a fuzzy area. Why did this happen? The demand for substance increased. In other words, Facebook was ingenuitive for its time but as more and more people came on the demand for entertainment rose. I believe this is the reason why we see so many more advertisements on Facebook, because rather than just sitting there and doing nothing we want to interact with something.
Twitter on the other hand is where I believe the most effective communication occurs. Sense ones limited to what they can say in a single post, one must craft their words more carefully. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows more open ended conversations about various issues or causes. Twitter created what is known as the hash tag. This is a platform that allows people to join in on a conversation. All one has to do is simply add the hash tag at the end of their tweet to be included in the conversation. The benefit to this is everyone who is following the campaign can see it and can reply or share what the other person said. While on Facebook there are pages designed for campaigns, not everyone can see them. One has to be a part of the group in order to join in the conversation. It's on Twitter that hash tags trend and the more something is trending the more people that are aware. This is partly why when launching a new product or service it's better to use Twitter initially. Arguably it's easier to follow a hash tag, because it's a lot more harder to misunderstand as opposed to a page, which could be phony or not providing enough information. A hash tag is all in one place, where as a page could be anywhere.
Ultimately, if you're looking for just a day to day conversation with a friend, Facebook is your best option. However, should you want to accomplish anything, at least initially start on Twitter, get the topic trending then move to Facebook where you can disseminate the information as you wish.
No comments:
Post a Comment