Facebook And Twitter: The Contrast Between Social Media

Introduction

Facebook and Twitter are both social media platforms. Facebook had 2.27 billion active users at the second quarter of 2018 (Abbruzzese, 2018) and then jumped to 2.32 billion active daily at the fourth quarter. Facebook publicized that they generated a little under what Wall Street analysts had anticipated, which was around $13.7 billion (Abbruzzese, 2018).

However, Twitter keeps losing followers, therefore will not be posting them on the internet (Kastrenakes, 2019). In an article posted by Kurt Wagner, titled ‘Twitter finally shared how big its daily user base is – and it’s a lot smaller than Snapchat’s,’ he states how Twitter has a lot less users than Snapchat, with Snapchat having 186 million active users. (Wagner, 2019)

At the age of 19, Mark Zuckerburg become the co-founder and CEO of Facebook in February, 2004 with his friends, Dustin Moskovits, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin. Zuckerburg was a student at Harvard University and studied psychology. He was a computer programmer and had already launched some social-networking websites (Phillips, 2007). According to an article written by Sarah Phillips, he created Coursematch (students were able to view what classes people in their degree were taking and which ones were recommended) and Facemash (students were able to vote/compare the attractiveness of two of the users in the app).

In comparison, the foundation of Twitter varies from story to story. A Forbes article titled ‘The Real Story of Twitter’ written by Christian Wolan has an “official version” and the “real version” of how twitter was created. The “official version” states that Twitter made its way onto the world wide web in 2006, starting in co-founder Evan Williams apartment in San Francisco, CA, along his side was “his former Google employee Biz Stone and the investor Jack Dorsey” (Wolan, 2011). They originally were trying to create a podcast program called Odeo. This did not last long due to the fact Apple had launched iTunes, this shifted Williams thoughts. They bought Odeo and pondered on a website with status updates with limited characters.

The “real version” of Twitter happens to be a bit longer and began in Noah Glass’ apartment where he started Odeo and then relocated it into Williams’ apartment. Odeo ended up having its own office building and 14 employees. Apple had launched the creation of iTunes and that stopped Odeo’s expansion, giving Dorsey the idea of a social network with status updates. Williams wasn’t so sure of the idea but put the leader of the project as Glass. Later on Williams told a few investors about Odeo’s new social networking project (Twitter) (Wolan, 2011). The investors sold back Odeo’s stock to Williams after he discovered that Twitter wouldn’t become a $5 billion. After purchasing Odeo, Williams changed the name and fired Glass saying Twitter was his idea from his own apartment.

Concept

Zuckerburg, Moskovits, Hughes, and Saverin, worked together to create their own social media networking site. They had a variety of things that would be placed on user’s profiles for this site. The profiles would include the users own profile picture, users would be able to upload photos, and be able to connect with other users. ‘The Facebook’ was generated out of a Harvard dorm room until four months later in June. Zuckerburg then decided to take Facebook on as his only priority, dropping out of Harvard and moved away to Palo Alto, California and took the company with him (Editors, 2014). Jack Dorsey was thinking of a way to update his friends with what he was doing and vice-versa, similar to SMS/texting, but different. He then presented his idea to his friends, Williams and Stone. They then gave him the go ahead to work on the network more and after Dorsey presented the project the group was all for it (MacArthur, 2018).

Ivy League vs. Friends

Essentially Facebook was created for college networking, “within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up.” (Phillips, 2007). Facebook was then opened up for most, if not all, colleges, high school students, and schools across the globe, which gave Facebook around 5.5 million users by the end of 2005. Facebook then turned in an advertising platform as well since it was “the popular social hub” (Editors, 2014).

Although Twitter helps with networking now, it was not made to be a networking site. Being more unprofessional, the founder/friends of Twitter thought it would be a good idea to keep up with each other without communicating daily. Each user would be able to update a status for their ‘followers’ to see. This created a way for each user to check their friends’ status update when they got the chance rather than a phone being over-communicated through.

Boom or Fail

After starting Facebook in 2004, they gained 1 million users by the end of the year. They then gained $12.7 million from Accel, even though Facebook was only open to Ivy League college students, giving Facebook a huge boost (Editors, 2014). After Facebook became worldwide, they gained 4 more million users by the end of 2005. The site was so huge, Zuckerburg turned down many “offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks” (Editors, 2014). Fourteen years down the road, Facebook is still booming and serving over 2 billion people daily. Facebook being a well-built website, it will be up and running for a very long time.

CEO Dorsey said in an article posted by Slate that “the platform is broken” (Oremus, 2018). With Twitter losing a lot of users’ year after year, they will have to do something to keep it alive. Dorsey is looking for ways to revamp Twitter and keep it up to date with its users. Depending on whether or not Twitter will fix the website will be whether or not they remain popular.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Facebook and Twitter are two very different social media platforms. One being able to gain a million users daily, to one losing users daily. If Twitter was to revamp and make its site more user friendly and easier to network, they would gain new users daily just like Facebook does. Facebook keeps updating rapidly and tests new ideas to see what users will like, this keeps and attracts more users due to users liking how Facebook changes frequently. In the long run, if both keep operating the same, Facebook will be here for decades and when the time comes Twitter will no longer exist.