by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: January 08, 2011   Last Updated: January 09, 2011

Facebook and Twitter are the two bastions of online social media, two of the biggest and most recognisable brands in the world today, and both have been around for less than five years. "Success" for members of both sites revolves around collecting a huge number of friends and then telling them that you've just had a cup of tea in a status update. And yet there are crucial differences between Facebook and Twitter, and although they are very obvious to most internet users, they always bear repeating.

The most crucial difference is that Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, where users share news of their lives in messages, or tweets, of 140 characters or less. Facebook, on the other hand, is a true social network where members share photographs, send messages and organise events. You can share status updates on Facebook, and many people do (often integrating their Twitter account with Facebook for the purpose), but its primary purpose is to keep in touch with friends. You can use Twitter to share photographs (hosted externally), send messages (direct messages of the same length as tweets) and organise events using hashtags, but when all's said and done it's all about broadcasting messages to your friends and followers, often about tea, your cat, or some article you've written for a content site...

So one crucial difference between Facebook and Twitter is that of primary purpose. Another crucial difference is that while both sites involve building up lists of contacts, Facebook tends to encourage members to connect with people they already know, and provides endless suggestions of 'people you may know' and opportunities to search your email address book for other Facebook members. Twitter, on the other hand, tends to encourage a rather looser network of friends, acquaintances and contacts. You can meet random people on Facebook, and you can limit your Twitter circle to your nearest and dearest, but there is a crucial difference in emphasis between the two sites. Facebook is for people you already know. Twitter is for discovering new anonymous acquaintances.

Mention of anonymity brings in another essential difference between the two sites. Because Facebook's aim is to put the user in touch with people they already know, the site collects a huge amount of personal data in order that a new user can successfully identify their friends and associates. The manner in which this data is collected, and stored, has been a continual thorn in Facebook side. Twitter is more of a site for people's online personas than their real life selves, and so it does not really collect much data beyond a valid email address. Again, there are many extra details you can supply for Twitter if you want, and you can sign up to Facebook with entirely fictitious personal data, but the two sites have a very different emphasis.

Finally, Twitter is a much more focused service than Facebook, for better or worse. Users go to Twitter in order to post updates and read the updates of others. That's about it. A visit to Facebook, however, can involve messages, chat, photo sharing, gaming and social organisation.

Twitter and Facebook are often mentioned in the same breath when talking about the Internet's current big hitting brands, but the two organisations could not be more different, in spite of their superficial similarities.

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