Anyone with a web presence can probably tell you that Twitter's growing extremely fast. It's outpacing Facebook's growth in the same period, according to Nick O'Neill's analysis using Google Trends. Here's the chart:
However, I am not convinced that this is a fair comparison.
- First of all, the early Facebook was not an open service. It required you to possess a dot-edu email address to register. The comparison should be made to Twitter's college student user base.
- Second, the price of admission to Facebook has always been considerable higher than Twitter. A FB account without a full profile is less meaningful and severely limits the user experience. Part of the cost of being a Facebook user is the profile completion effort. Twitter does not have this barrier.
- And finally, I attribute a part of Twitter's growth pace to the existing proliferation of social networks, including Facebook. Facebook has been a catalyzer to Twitter.
It's tempting to compare Twitter and Facebook. However, I think it is as misplaced a comparison as the common Facebook / MySpace deathmatch. Twitter is not a technology company. It's a great feature, and I don't mean that dismissively, as I think you can build a great company with a feature. Nevertheless, I'd be worried, if I ran Twitter, of its long term viability. There will be only one owner of the social graph and the current favorite to win is Facebook.
Om's headline for his latest article on Twitter is: For Twitter The Only Way Is Up
http://gigaom.com/2009/04/15/for-twitter-the-only-way-is-up/
I still think that soon Twitter will need some flavor to make its growth constant.
BTW some PD's started adopting Twitter to protect their communities.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090413.wgttwitter0413/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090413.wgttwitter0413
Posted by: Tahir Zaimoglu | April 16, 2009 at 10:49 AM