Recap 2009 – Facebook vs Twitter

2009 – Was it a Facebook’s or was it Twitter’s year of grace?

Every single morning when you log into your laptop and all you can read on the WATblog’s and Techcrunch’s of the world is some or the other thing about Twitter or Facebook, isn’t that enough to dedicate a whole section to the round up 2009 to these two social networking giants?! Social media was the hype of year 2009 and I guess it will continue to be for atleast the next couple of years. 2009 laid the foundation for the viral growth of these networks with the subscriber numbers increasing by millions and the features by trillions.

Although Facebook has got an edge by having a strong focus on user security and privacy as compared to Twitter which is caught in a mad rush to add users and completely neglecting its servers and their security.

The year of new (and similar?) features – It started with Facebook getting a Twitter like feed on its homepage and then it gradually progressed to Live Feeds and New Feeds. The Facebook Lite also had an uncanny resemblence to Twitter. Twitter went to a higher level and introduced features like Lists and its ever cranky in built re-tweet feature. And if you missed it, the birds in your garden may not be allowed to Tweet anymore, twitter is trying to trademark that word.

Facebook wasn’t left far behind, with its more improved and ofcourse more complicated privacy features. It even launched a tutorial for that!! When we are talking of copying features, how can we forget the Twitter like tagging feature of Facebook?

Of new milestones – Facebook breached the 350 million users mark! Twiter is not left far behind, though studies indicate that 60% people just make a Twitter account for hygene purposes. You are not on Twitter?? Shame Shame!

3-2-1 you are live! – Every second counts! Weather in indexing the content or declairing the live feed sharing deals with search engines! With Twitter and Facebook announcing their live feed sharing deals with Google and Bing within a couple of hours, a new war has begun! And of course there is a newspaper consertium declairing a face-off with Google! As an author and SEO expert, i can safely assume that can be a grave mistake! Over 50% of my website traffic comes from Google News! Why are newspaper so stubborn about their subscription model? But revenue generation through display advertizing is a topic of another good debate. But it seems like Google is trying to work out a middle way.

Honey, its all about money – The latest valuation of Facebook stands at US$ 15 Billion. And Twitter? Apart from a hack-o-leak of its financial targets, it has been mum on the financial side. Its all a part of a bigger game. At this point, no one can evaluate what the real worth of Twitter is, because it generates no revenues!! So the questions of P/E ratios and revenue based valuation goes out of the window! The day you start earning some revenues on the books, your over-hyped valuations go for a spin. So the best strategy for Twitter is still to stick a bill-board outside its office “We are still thinking about revenue generation plans, our first target is to achieve 50% uptime for Twitter!” (Ok! I am being harsh, the uptime target should be 70%)

Of scams, responsibilities and Future targets – Heard of Scamville? Yeah right! So as you grow beyond a certain limit, maintaining the quality should be the first thing you should think of when you get up. Remember all those “How will i meet my ‘chosen one’ quizzes on Facebook? No one has so much waste time to help you find your ‘chosen one’. Its all a part of some bigger game-plans of making money through trading your personal information which you grant access to by clicking that little blue “Allow” button. I think both Facebook and Twitter should consider user privacy with utmost importance. I give a higher rating to Twitter on this account on its efforts on privacy. Recently it has decided to permanently delete the deleted tweets from its streams and search. Good for the people who swore about their bosses and then deleted it later!

We believe, there is still growth potential for both of these networks to capture the untapped internet using population (and of-course also those who still use orkut etc) but the priority should be given to the scalability and the security of their networks. It doesn’t take much of a breach to shoo away all the millions of visitors from your site. Relatively, 2009 has proven a much better year for Facebook than for Twitter, but we seriously hope that Twitter achieves its target of becoming the water-cooler of the world in the near future.