Facebook is dead. And so is Twitter.
An interesting argument was made by Dustin Clingman, a local game designer, at the DMAF’s “State-of-the-Digital Media-Industry” event in Orlando.
He makes the point that Twitter, unlike Facebook, has positioned itself as an extremely efficient method for spreading out information with global context. He makes his point by asking the question, “Who found out about Michael Jackson being dead on Facebook?“
In his comparison of the two platforms, from a mass-communications standpoint, I totally agree with his point that “Facebook is dead”.
However, I think his comparison is short-sighted in a couple of regards and is clearly from the stand point of a non-marketer.
For one, Twitter has lost alot of it’s trust factor. It’s becoming a very noisy platform that’s been infiltrated by unscrupulous marketers, get rich quick schemes, hackers, hoaxsters and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bots (no one, not even Twitter knows the extent of this problem). Following the death of Michael Jackson, who found out that Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Degeneres, and Britney Spears had died on Facebook? These claims were all over Twitter, yet were all completely false.
Secondly, Dustin has failed to factor in the huge marketing potential that Facebook provides—the potential for word of mouth marketing in groups of friends with an implicit level of trust that’s unparalleled on other social platforms. According to a recent study by eMarketer, 34% of US Internet users bought a product based on a recommendation from a friend or relative. Compare this to a mere 5% who were influenced by a blogger (or micro-blogger).
So while were doing comparisons, from a social media trust and WOM standpoint, I believe that “Twitter is dead”.
Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jul. 02, 2009
Comments
This response was intended to be a response to Dustin Clingman’s statement that “Facebook was dead”.
I took his argument of “Facebook being dead” (his assertion that Twitter can more effectively spread news through the social graph than Facebook) and applied it to some features of Facebook in which Twitter comes up short.
From a marketers perspective, the power of word of mouth is a cornerstone of social media. Word of mouth, however, requires trust, and lots of it. Compared to Facebook, Twitter falls short in this arena. It’s just the nature of Twitter’s relationships. Please don’t interpret this as me saying that meaningful relationships are impossible on Twitter. I just think they’re less prolific than on Facebook.
One could argue that Twitter doesn’t hold up to some basic social media ideals (honest and trustworthy opinions) as well as Facebook, and based on his original argument/analogy, “is dead”.
In reality, it’s pretty clear that both of these competing platforms are alive and well. And they both deliver in remarkable, yet very distinct, ways.
Posted by Jeremy Hilton on 07/03/2009 10:16 AM
Your logic is a bit odd.
You’re basically saying that any platform that gets enough of an audience to actually be a worthwhile platform for marketing is, in effect, “dead.“ The only problem with that is that platforms don’t become useful for most people until they’re used by a critical mass of people.
Twitter and Facebook are only dead in the eyes of the technorati who are, like junkies, desperate for the next hit. They will only be supplanted by platforms that are more efficient at sharing information than they are.
Posted by Trent Hamm on 07/03/2009 04:31 PM
Trent,
That’s not what I’m saying.
The analogy of being “dead” was originally from Dustin Clingman, please watch the video (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markkrupinski/3679380634).
If you read my previous comment, you’ll see that I stated that these platforms are alive and well. I was simply responding to his argument in same terms that he used… “Facebook is dead”.
Posted by Jeremy Hilton on 07/03/2009 05:15 PM
For me, twitter is a news source, Facebook is a personal/friends chat room. I like both and I don’‘t see either going away.
Posted by Mark Baratelli on 07/03/2009 05:36 PM
There will always be “unscrupulous marketers” & misinformation, but the bad info you mention on other deaths, was just as quickly dispelled. Your blog supports facebook as mktg tool b/c of friends. Twitter & other SM allow friendships to develop and/or strengthen but will always be abused.
“Hucksters” abused the town square in the past, at the time considered a great place to go for information. The town square didn’t die from bad information but rather from better means of information delivery. That was newspaper and print, which lost some luster to TV and radio…etc.
Email is misused for spam, but we don’t argue that email is dead. It is simply a communication tool. We will always have to filter the good from the bad.
In the meantime Twitter remains a viable communication tool because of it’s immediacy, reach and many headed perspective.
Posted by John McClung on 07/03/2009 08:30 AM