twitter versus facebook
TweetSo in terms of numbers there’s no competition. facebook globally is close to 1 billion users and in Ireland its over 2 million. Twitter claims 300 million accounts and 100 million active accounts but in terms of impact on news, information and global communications twitter is having a profound and transformational impact. The current news headlines about facebook’s value link it directly to the emerging value around the facebook advertisement and marketing base. Some Irish brands now spend as much as 30% of their budget in facebook. facebook’s advert and sponsored stories have become part and parcel of any contemporary marketing spend. The attraction is not just the size of the audience you can reach but how defined it can be and how closely you can match your produce or offering to people who might need it. You can run a campaign in facebook for as little as a euro a day and build from there.
For twitter the business model is extremely weak yet its impact and potential power is clear from its use in political civil conflicts whether Syria or Russia or in breaking news stories including the attack and death of Bin Laden last year which broke first and spread globally as a story on twitter. The New York Times says twitter is as fundamental a part of its news distribution as print and boasts that a tweet from the New York Times is shared every four seconds on twitter.
So it spread news, information, views and stories rapidly and globally. It’s changing and disrupting just about every traditional information medium you can think about and in particular it’s changing things for news providers like newspapers and broadcaster news channels. Twitter is fundamentally a micro-blog, its a blog on speed, but it’s still a blog and the best approach to using twitter is to see it as a blog; a way to communicate, to tell and share stories, pictures, videos, ideas and audio and more importantly a way to have conversations and to enjoy the experience of people talking back to your ideas, stories and content. People often judge twitter as a place where silly things get shared and of course that happens. Its all human life; no more than any gathering of human beings. People will exchange views on TV last night as much as the world events in Washington, Brussels and Moscow. They’ll also share stories as they happen; whether its TV, sports competitions or new events. Newstalk recently estimated that up to 30% of all images we use every day are user generated, taken by us, and coming via mobile photo uploads. Mobile use of social media platforms increases utilisation by about 50% so its easy to see how having a smart phone in your pocket with the twitter app means you can take a photo or video or an event, as it happens, and share it globally and immediately. That’s incredible particularly if you think about how it means we can and could leverage the power of citizens. You see this happening for both good and bad purposes. After all its all human life so we’ll use tools for both good and bad purposes. In the London riots you saw twitter being used by rioters to gather crowds and riot but ironically all that information is now being used to prosecute rioters. So it works both ways.
For me twitter is the game-changer. facebook allows real communities to be formed and has had a dramatic and profound impact on how we connect personally and socially. It now forms a significant part of advertisement revenue and that will grow in 2012. But in 2012 the real story will be twitter - with events like the Olympics and Euro 2012 watch and see how twitter becomes part of the way we tell and collect stories and how we as human beings come together in story-telling in online conversations and watch the impact that has - not just on business - but on society. In 2012 newspapers that don’t take on the the transformational nature of online content and in particularly platforms like twitter will miss an opportunity and risk being left behind. Media and technology have already required that we do not get too attached to the current, what exists today, as things are constantly changing. Businesses which look with fear and loathing at the twitter phenonmenon miss the huge opportunity these transformational models provide. Seeing the risks is important but seeing them only means we miss the opportunity which can not just help us survive but allow us to grow.
Adapt and thrive is the advice for media and businesses confronting that challenge. We’re busy running workshops looking at how twitter and social media changes the ways we communicate, connect and converse. We’re regularly working with The Irish Times on its relationship with twitter and online content and in the coming months we will be training with the Dublin Enterprise Board. Give us a shout on 01 4883350 if we can help you make the shift online or work with your teams on their online thinking.