5 Ways Twitter Can Crush The Facebook Empire

Could we witness a retelling of David versus Goliath with an epic battle between the two largest social networking networking competitors? You have Facebook, which continually grows amidst its privacy woes. Then you have Twitter, which faces scalability issues with increasing usage. As big as they both are, Twitter is tiny compared to Facebook’s massive user base, but maybe not for long.

These two services were, at a time, very different from each other. They both had separate methods to their madness: one focusing on a tight-knit network of close friends and the other offering massive community with plenty of networking opportunities. But now they grow more alike with each passing day. Facebook is constantly urging its users to share more personal information as the site opens itself up to the world, a move which has been met with some dismay. Twitter keeps adding functionality that makes the sites more powerful yet more complex.

Who knows what these services will look like a few years from now?

But the one thing that keeps these services separated from each other at present is the statistics. Facebook’s estimated 500 million users, which is equivalent to the combined populations of the United States and Brazil, are core to one of the most prominent social networks in existence. Facebook has also become a household name around the world.

Yet Twitter’s 125 million users, while not as impressive as a figure as Facebook’s, has enabled all of its users to be connected with each other either directly or indirectly. Furthermore, Twitter offers developers, advertisers, marketers, and users a goldmine of data that is open to the world. And its growth is promising.

So will Twitter be able to keep up with Facebook’s growth and, perhaps, surpass it? A few things might allow that to happen.

1. Openness

One of the biggest ways that Twitter differentiates itself from Facebook is with openness. Facebook is a closed system that locks people to its platform in numerous ways. Twitter, on the other hand, thrives on its open platform, which invites third-parties and users to share their data with everyone. Facebook’s closed-down tendencies with regards to the exporting and sharing of information could ultimately give Twitter’s users and developers the edge — it’s just a matter of what users and developers will prefer in the grand scheme of things.

2. Privacy Blunders

Privacy is always a hot topic, and it is one of the biggest problems that Facebook faces. Twitter was established as a public service — you join Twitter knowing that everyone is going to see what you write. With Facebook, that isn’t necessarily true, and that causes conflict, especially as Facebook continues to shift away from the privacy wall that it once provided. Facebook has already had several privacy blunders, but there is still much more room for error, where Twitter has far less to worry about.

3. Hollywood

Celebrities tend to be leaders, with thousands — if not millions — following in their footsteps. From superstar athletes to A-list actors, Twitter is loaded with this celebrity appeal. This is a very good thing for Twitter. While Facebook allows people to “Like” celebrities, managing these interactions is quite difficult and unintuitive. Twitter presents these interactions in a simpler manner, which allows for better interaction. So as Hollywood continues to establish its presence on social media, Twitter will continue to benefit.

4. Third-Party Support

Facebook and Twitter are stacked nicely in the third-party support department, but Twitter has the edge in experience. Whereas developers typically create platform-specific applications for Facebook, developers for Twitter are much more free in this regard. The freedom that Twitter provides could prove more appealing to developers. You could liken this to the iPhone (which is simple and closed) versus Android (which is chaotic and complex). That said, Twitter needs to stop stepping on its third-parties’ turf.

5. Simplicity

And one of the last things Twitter can do to steal the throne away from Facebook is to remain simple. Facebook has become a complex experience, with complicated privacy controls, hundreds of thousands of applications, dozens of buttons on its homepage, and information overload. With Twitter, you have a timeline with information from people you follow — that is all there is to it. If Facebook can present users with a simple option, while Facebook becomes far more complex to manage, it could bring in some converts.