Battle of the Social Networks: Twitter vs. Facebook

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Facebook trends were taking over the world. A few weeks later, I’m back to follow up with what’s been going on with Facebook lately.

However, to be honest, these past few weeks I realized that my roommates and I are rapidly becoming more active members of Twitter and blowing Facebook off to the max. I’ve had a Twitter account for a while and I’ve never really been super into it. I really only used it to share TheClebrityCafe articles with my 6 followers.

However, as of late, all my friends are becoming Twitter happy- We tweet at each other during class, we follow our favorite celebrities, and we are constantly telling the world what is going on with our lives. I’m getting Twitter follower requests left and right… granted, not nearly as many as Charlie Sheen, but I ‘m not the only one realizing that Twitter is rapidly becoming a more popular networking tool for college students.

I went from a pathetic 6 followers to followers in the double digits in the past 2 weeks. I decided that this couldn’t be an isolated phenomenon in me and my roommates' lives, so I asked a random selection of students at my university library if they have Twitter accounts and if they are active on them. The majority of people I asked told me that they’ve had one for a while, but really just started using it this year. Why the change?

I’m obviously no Twitter expert but here’s my theory: Twitter is the more mature social network. Here are my reasons.
1. With the rise of young professionals, college students have been making their Facebooks more and more private. Facebook used to be such an addiction because you could see everyone’s unflattering pictures and stalk wall-to-wall conversations between your crush and the girl your competing with for his attention. Now, most people make their pictures private and some people even make their walls private, so Facebook has started to lose some of it’s glow for college students. Twitter might be the more mature form of social networking for the business-savvy juniors, seniors, and graduate students who still want to be connected to the social network but don’t want to ruin their futures with their tacky party pictures and lewd Facebook wall-to-walls.

2. With juniors and seniors looking for internships and jobs, we don’t have as much time to dedicate to our Facebook page- Twitter calls for much less maintenance, and requires significantly less attention. You can get the general picture of what everyone is doing without getting stuck in the 2 hours time warp that you can’t avoid once you sign onto Facebook. Once you start, you can't stop when it comes to Facebook… you sign on the check your friends pictures and hours later you find yourself still sitting on the couch somehow stalking your best friends, roommates, moms, ex husbands, son… Twitter is quick, and when you only allow yourself 20 minutes to get on your social networking site of choice, Twitter gives you more info for your time- it’s Social Networking for the time-savvy!

3. On that same note, when it comes to saving time, Twitter is like the Target of the internet -- one stop and you’re all set! You can use Twitter to get all kinds of news. You can check up on your favorite celebrities, on politics, on your friends, on your favorite bands. All you need is 20 minutes a day and you can call yourself a well-rounded individual.

4. Lastly, at most colleges and universities, junior year is the year that most students choose to go abroad. I think it is no coincidence that Twitter has become very popular my junior year… it is a very easy way to follow your friends oversees! They can post short snippets several times a day with what they are doing. There has been Facebook controversy over the appropriate number of times in a day you should update your status. Most people agree that once a day is as far as you should go, but when your friends go abroad, you want to know what they are doing all the time! Twitter gives them the social luxury of tweeting as much as they want. If they want to tweet 4 times in a day, they absolutely can do so without looking pathetic, and all of their friends back home appreciate the updates!

It used to be that MySpace was for highschoolers, Facebook was for college students, and social networking was creepy for anyone else. These days, the rest of the world is realizing the potential that social networking offers for anyone looking to market themselves, their company, their product, ect. If you can do it, you can probably use social networking to enhance it. So whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, or another network, get yourself on the web -- it’s where everyone else is!