In March 2006, Twitter was founded by Obvious Corp. It is now the fastest growing free micro-blogging software and also, undeniably popular, according to ezinearticles.com. Twitter was designed to answer the one question, "What are you doing?" in 140 characters. On Twitter, users "Tweet", which differentiates it from MySpace and Facebook. Twitter is a phenomena that is not only used for social networking, but also marketing. Many celebrities use Twitter to gain followers and, ultimately, boost their popularity. Twitter has more than 160 million customers, Facebook has more than 500 million.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter has recently redesigned their website to attract more users and gain more advertisers over Facebook. Facebook encourages users to post videos, pictures, and interact with each other. Twitter is used more often to simply see other user's information, such as train delays, natural disasters, or political updates. This redesign allows users to watch videos directly on Twitter. Before, another browser tab would open. The company is also making an effort to attract advertisers and are considering ads that target users based on what they tweet. "Promoted Tweet" is a new initiative that allows advertisers to sponsor tweets that show up when a user searches certain keywords using Twitter's service. These changes will make Twitter more like Facebook, creating more competition and encouraging innovative changes in both companies and, eventually, the social networking circuit of the telecommunications industry.
As a Facebook user, I prefer Facebook service over Twitter. I think these redesigns by Twitter will be very beneficial to their company. If they add the increased competition to Facebook, Facebook will be forced to come up with innovative ways to keep their user's from switching to Twitter. Online social networking, over the past few years, has become very popular in the telecommunications industry. As leaders in this circuit of the industry, Facebook and Twitter have the ability to effect the industry with their innovations and choices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703376504575492412083990120.html?KEYWORDS=twitter
ReplyDeleteIt is incredible how much Facebook and Twitter have impacted the communications industry considering how recently these companies were created. Both have revolutionized the way ideas are shared, and have moved us into nothing less than an instantaneous world of communication. Google Inc. has done a very similar redesign and is now advertising all across the Web promoting their great increase in ad space. These social networking sites are amazing to follow to see emerging trends because they are compared side-by-side everyday by the public so they respond incredibly rapidly when they see that another company has implemented a successful idea. Considering how much they have grown in the recent few years since their creation, it will be extremely interesting to see where they will be in five years from now and how they have further impacted the telecommunications industry.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think that Twitter and Facebook are each other's direct competition? As a user of both, I've found that they don't really serve the same purposes--or perhaps, Facebook covers most of Twitter's features, but adds a thousand others, while Twitter's greatest asset is its simplicity.
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