When the internet first came, there were not many things to do with it, but the innovation and technology do not stop there but, in fact, started from that point. With the help of the internet, several things were invented. These include apps, websites, video calling, easier communication, storage advancement, and the list is never-ending.
Among these inventions, there are social media platforms. They are among the best invention to create a friendly environment. A most common example of such platforms is Facebook and Twitter. Both of them are used by almost everyone on earth with an internet connection and an electronic device. Despite the fact they are social media platforms, both of them have many differences.
Facebook vs Twitter
The main difference between Facebook and Twitter is that both of them were founded by different people in different years. Facebook was founded earlier in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, whereas Jack Dorsey Founded Twitter later on in 2006. Both of their headquarters are located in a different part of California, USA. Facebook is situated in Menlo Park, while Twitter is in San Francisco. Both of them have different types of audiences, but mainly the difference lies in what the audience is referred to as. In Facebook, the audience is mainly referred to as friends, while on Twitter, they are referred to as followers. They also focus on a different aspect. Facebook mainly focuses on the social graph of the audience, while Twitter focuses mainly on the interest graph of the audience. Except these, they also differ in terms of the life span of their content, characters of content, playing games feature, etc.
Facebook is a social media platform where a person can add friends and relatives as his friends. It can be used for uploading status, photos, videos, etc. It also has the option of messaging friends online, playing games, video calling, etc. it was released in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, and after that, there are other platforms released that are powered by Facebook.
Twitter is another social media platform where you can add people as followers and following. In this platform, you mainly upload a tweet or a microblog which will attract a large audience. It was released in 2006 by Jack Dorsey. It is mainly used for expressing a viewpoint on some social issue, on recent trends, or even in general. It offers limited features as compared to other platforms.
Comparison Table Between Facebook and Twitter
| Parameters of Comparison | ||
| Founders | Mark Zuckerberg | Jack Dorsey |
| Released in | 2004 | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, California | San Francisco, California, USA. |
| Audience | Friends | Followers |
| Focuses on | Social Graph | Interest Graph |
What is Facebook?
It offers several features, such as liking, commenting, or sharing someone else post. It allows video calling and chatting with friends online. It is the choice of the user whether he wants to share his content publically or privately with chosen people. Basically, this was created as a school-based social network, but later in 2006, it was accessible to everyone above 13 years old and became the most popular social media platform.
It is liked by many as it is a user-friendly platform, where anyone can share their stuff with the people they want. There is technical study required for using this app. Anyone can use this; even if they are not educated, it is that simple.
Some of the basic features Facebook offers are:
- It allows you to add people like you your friends and allows you to choose who can see your content online.
- It allows you to maintain albums by uploading photos and videos, which can also be shared with your friends.
- It allows you to chat and video call with your friends or share other information with them.
- It also supports different types of pages, such as support pages, fan pages, etc.
- It is also used for an online business where seller uploads the information about the product or service, and interested buyers can buy it.
- There is also an option of live streaming.
What is Twitter?
Following are some of the important features Twitter offers to its users:
- Enable grouping of people: in this platform, you can make groups of friends and relatives. Therefore you can share different types of tweets in different groups at your convenience.
- Autocomplete feature: it is a feature where you can find a particular person online by just typing text, and then you’ll get suggestions with whom you can directly share your tweets.
- Text links in a tweet: this feature helps overcome the disadvantage of characters limitation; it offers to add hyperlinks to the text to provide more room for the content.
- Another important that Twitter has is that it allows you to see how many people have used your username in the tweets they have posted to keep you updated.
There are other features too that are available on the platform. It is mainly used to voice your opinion on a particular subject. Some might still argue that there are some updates needs to make it a better and user-friendly platform.
Main Differences Between Facebook and Twitter
- Both of them offer basic features to their users. In Facebook, the basic feature is to maintain a good and healthy social life by keeping in touch with your friends and relatives, whereas Twitter offers the basic feature of microblogging.
- Both of them include different types of content uploaded online, but they differ in terms of the characters of the content that can be uploaded. In Facebook, there is no limit to the characters of the content. Unlimited uploads can be done, whereas, in Twitter, the characters are limited up to 140.
- They also differ in terms of the life span of the content, here also Facebook has an advantage as status or anything posted/uploaded on Facebook remains forever, whereas engagement is Twitter is not forever. In fact, it is short-term due to the updates.
- Facebook also has a feature of playing online games, where the user can play games available on the platform with their friends, whereas there is no such feature available on Twitter.
- Both of them have different options for sharing their views on posts. Facebook offers features such as like, comment, and share of a picture or video uploaded by their friends, whereas Twitter has features such as to reply, retweet, and favorite of the uploads made by their followers/followings.
Conclusion
Hence, all the differences and other information have been cleared; therefore, there should not be any confusion between both of the platforms. They are a great source of communicating and getting to know different people by just sitting at a place. They can be used as websites and as apps. They have several features that make it easy to engage with people all over the world and share updates of their life with them. They have options of uploading pictures and other stuff online, they can share their thoughts, and they can make friends over there.
Some of the social media platforms are also used for business nowadays, where people sell their products on it, and interested buyers can have communication for buying that along with other inquiries.
References
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563211002457
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996812000059
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10447318.2014.986640