Twitter is More Advanced than Facebook (Think #NewTwitter)

So over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been watching the beginning of the New Twitter web interface. I’ve determined that the social network is more advanced and more useful than facebook. Using #NewTwitter as the point of reference, the functionality and speed of their new web interface out performs not only the old interface but the current structure of facebook. While facebook has tremendous value to users, it is limited to itself… more on that in a moment.

Now let me lay a foundation by saying that this is a marketing blog and not a tech blog or social media blog. So from a marketing standpoint, twitter is extremely useful. Twitter has begun to explain their advertising model, which makes it a viable outlet for marketers all over the world. I’m confident they will continue to work out new ways of creating engaging advertising. In the mean time one of their best models is promoted tweets. These tweets are currently showing in trending lists and in feeds when relevant. The fact is according to their website they will make sure that ads are relevant and that resonate with the user. Twitter.com describes it this way:

We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.

The reason why this is key is because simply another ad may or may not get my attention, by when it is modeled for interaction it is meaningful. This model will continue to grow and change, but I think they are on a great path.

Why Twitter is More Advanced than Facebook: Facebook is a fantastic social networking tool, and they have done a great job of making the user interface into a brand. The “Like” button has become a recognized staple of many websites as they’ve integrated the portability of it. Facebook however is primarily limited to itself. Facebook is Facebook.com.

Discovery: Twitter allows you to discover new things and new people. Twitter is becoming a big player in search, and is even a relevant factor to google search rankings. This makes the value of twitter extend well beyond the platform itself. People are searching for many things, and conversations are part of that.

Open Source: Twitter has operated on open API for quite some time now, which has allowed apps like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic to make the tool more useful for social connection as well as other uses. Forget about the fact that the site and it’s functions run faster, the open API has allowed an open collaboration of people learning how to use the tool the way they want to. The open source model has essentially allowed third party apps to help shape what twitter is becoming.

Innovative and Personalized Use: At the redwall LIVE : Experiential Marketing office we have an account that is purely for internal communications. It is following and followed by our team only and mobile is turned on for this. What does this do for us? Well it’s very simple, if you have to tell the team anything: (On my way, going to be late, last minute client call, special memos about bathroom policies at the office) you simply for to your android phone, load up the hootsuite mobile app and send the tweet. Everyone gets it by text and the message is distributed. Let me simply state that this is not revolutionary, it is simply our team using the software to work for us. With an open source developer API, many many more advanced uses will be developed. Some already exist.