Facebook vs. Twitter Comparisons are a Waste of Time

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments

Facebook Vs. TwitterEveryone loves drama and two foes battling out toe-to-toe for supremacy. In the high-tech world, we celebrate and obsess over rivalries – e.g. Bing vs. Google, and Firefox vs. IE.

So, it’s not surprising to see growing fascination about Twitter vs. Facebook as Facebook extends its platform to include features such as vanity URLs and a more user-friendly API.

While Twitter vs. Facebook obviously makes a good story, it’s a battle getting far more than attention than it deserves. Here’s why:

1. While there is some overlap because Twitter and Facebook are both communications platforms, people use them differently. Twitter is a system to quickly send and receive messages. This is its primary focus, although there are a few other things you can do. While sending/receiving messages is definitely part of Facebook, it’s just one part of the mix as a tool to maintain relationships digitally – in addition to uploading photographs, etc.

2. Twitter is increasingly becoming a tool to share information given the number of URLs included in updates – a phenomena that’s quickly making Twitter an intriguing search tool. On Facebook, sharing consists of photographs, social plans and personal updates. Sure, you can share a link but it’s probably not one of Facebook’s go-to applications.

3. As noted above, Twitter is evolving into a search engine for people looking for ways to search differently and access real-time trends. Facebook is not a search engine, and it’s hard to say whether Facebook Lexicon has much traction as trend tool.

4. Twitter is becoming a popular mobile tool for people to provide updates, including the reporting of news such as the elections in Iran. While Facebook has a mobile footprint, it’s far less compelling than the desktop service.

5. Facebook’s business model is focused on advertising, a volume business driven by page views. Twitter apparently has no interest in advertising and, to date, no business model.

6. Twitter has potential as an enterprise tool so employees can communicate within groups. Facebook use within the corporate environment is tolerated but not encouraged.

So, what do you think? Are Twitter-Facebook comparisons valid or off the mark?

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An In-Depth Exploration of Twitter

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments

Twitter-Logo-1
Twitter’s growth this year has been explosive. But just how explosive has it been and how are people using it?
Sysomos (a client that offers social media analytics services) decided to get an in-depth handle on all things Twitter by collecting information from 11.5 million Twitter accounts, which is probably the biggest sample-set done so far.

Among the findings are that:

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009, including Oprah (@oprah), who has 1.4 million followers but only follows 14 people. Oprah might want to think about updating more often given she’s been absent since June 6.

• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day

• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet

• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.

• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity

• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools – mobile and Web-based – other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck, a personal favorite, is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.

The complete Sysomos report can be found online on Sysomos’ Web site, as well as versions in PDF and Word.

More: TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld did a blog post on the report.

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Who’s Not Writing a Book These Days?

By Mark Evans in Media 9 Comments

BooksAt a time when more people interested in technology are getting their content fix from the Web, it seems that everyone is writing a book these days. Among the people who have written or now writing a book include:

Tara Hunt, who’s now moving to Montreal, and working on second book after recently completing The Whuffle Factor; popular cartoonist Hugh MacLeod (How to be Creative), Doc Searls, Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation) and Chris Brogan (Trust Agents).

It is interesting to see so many people so excited about writing books, and so many publishers excited about publishing books. It may be that the high-tech world is going through such exciting change these days with the emergence of new things such as social media that many people feel the need to articulate their thoughts and ideas to a receptive audience.

Another explanation could be that blogging has created a DIY creation culture in which people who would have never thought about writing a book are now getting the opportunity to do so because they been working on their writing chops for the past few years, built an audience, and shown publishers there may be a market.

Having written a book about high-tech investing that, unfortunately, was published just as the dot-com boom went bust, I can tell you that writing a book a labour of love. It’s a lot of hard work that burns up a lot of hours. While many authors make little money from writing books, they can serve as great marketing tools if you’re trying to build a personal brand in a competitive space.

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Usernames: Social Media Pots of Gold?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments

There’s lots of buzz about how you’ll soon be able to grab a personal username on Facebook (e.g. facebook.com/mark.evans). And, no doubt, there will be many people on their keyboard at midnight Friday to secure their Facebook vanity plate. Who knows, maybe I’ll try to grab mark.evans if I’m awake and can remember to visit Facebook.

The more interesting story is whether social media usernames are going to evolve into a market/business like URLs in which people are willing to pay healthy amounts for a particular username. If for, example, you’ve got twitter.com/business or facebook.com/searchengine, do those names have value to other people?

I think the answer is “definitely”, which could set the stage for username squatters to establish footholds all over the social media landscape – if they haven’t done so already.

If you’re curious about whether a social media user name is available, there are lots of services, including namechk.

For more thoughts on Facebook’s personal username program, check out Factory Joe.

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The Cell Phone is Dead; Long Live the Smart Phone!

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 11 Comments

Iphone 3Gs
With Apple introducing the faster, more powerful and less expensive iPhone 3G S, I think it’s time to officially declare the cell phone dead.

Yup, the simple wireless device that lets you make and receive phone calls while away from the home or office looks to be going extinct. Why would anyone possess such a primitive device when they can have a mini-computer that can do pretty anything you could imagine…and make phone calls.

Over the past few months, one of the more interesting things I’ve noticed is how many people now have smart phones such as the iPhone or Blackberry. People who would never imagine to have to need a smartphone have become well-armed mobile warriors.

Borrowing a well-worn phrase, yesterday’s announcement by Apple is the “tipping point” for smart phones. At $99 for an 8GB model, the iPhone is so inexpensive that it’s almost irresistible if you want to do anything more than just make phone calls.

The key, of course, will be data plans because that’s where wireless carriers make their margins and profits. You could give away the iPhone but it wouldn’t matter if the data rates were sky high. In Canada, Rogers is hoping jump-start iPhone 3G S sales by re-introducing the 6GB for $30/month plan, while offering 500MB for $25/month.

Having used an iPhone for the past couple of months, 500MB is a lot of data unless you’re regularly watching videos, so the 6GB plan is sexy and attractive but not really practical. Mind you, paying an extra $5 for 5.5GB is a smart move. (Note: Existing iPhone customers with Rogers can switch to the $30/6GB plan but it involves accepting a new contract.)

Along the Blackberry Storm, Nokia E95, Android, and Palm Pre, we’re entering an amazing period for the smart phone market. With blinding speed, the devices are getting better and less expensive, making it increasingly attractive to climb on the bandwagon.

Before getting too excited, keep in mind the smart phone market is not unlike the razor/razor blade market. While you won’t cough up too for the razor, it’s the razor blade that you’ll keep paying for. The question is how much you’ll pay.

More: TechCrunch has a post on how it will cost iPhone users in the U.S. (AT&T) to upgrade to the new iPhone, while Gizmodo has a complete feature guide.

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Battling the Blogging Blues

By Mark Evans in Blogs 9 Comments

Here are some truths about blogging: it’s easy and, at the same time, it can be challenging.

It’s easy to set up a blog, many within minutes by using Blogger.com or WordPress.com. This explains why thousands of blogs are created every minute of every day. If you’ve got a blogging itch, it’s easy to scratch.

It’s a snap to start writing – slap up a headline, pound out three to 10 paragraphs of insight, and then click “publish”

It’s easy to embrace a variety of tools to pimp your blog – widgets, counters, commenting system, RSS chicklets, as well as new themes.

And it’s easy to go through a honeymoon period with the ideas and blog posts are flowing.

But – and here’s the big but – blogging can be difficult.

It’s difficult to come up with insightful, creative blog posts day after day. A blog is like a dog, and it needs to be fed pretty much every day – whether it’s a can of Alpo, kitchen scraps or a high-end, low-fat concoction.

A blog calls you every day for new content, and doesn’t like it when the supply system breaks down because you’re uninspired, tired or busy doing something else. Even more challenging is blogs can, in theory, be more successful is you write more content given how search engines like fresh blog content.

It can be difficult to attract an audience. There’s millions of other blogs out there – 133 million to be exact, although only 7.4 million have been updated in the past 120 days, according to Technorati. Given the competitive, attracting attention to your posts is a huge challenge even if you put tremendous thought and effort into them. For months, my brother and I wrote a blog called “Four Reasons Why…” that, I thought, was a pretty insightful and funny look at reasons for all kinds of different things. Sadly, it was a failure traffic-wise so we moved on other things.

Truth be told, attracting a broad readership to a blog is like winning the lottery. You need to get lucky by picking the right topic, writing good posts, and do something to attract the spotlight – such as a link on a well-known person’s blog or a mainstream blog, or simply write about something different that captures the imagination such as Stuff White People Like.

It can be difficult to commit the time and effort to nurture a blog. It’s more than just dutifully writing blog posts every day; you’ve got to respond to comments, and engage with the community by leaving comments on other blogs, promoting your blog on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg, Mixx, et al. You’ve got to be pimping your blog each and every opportunity. It’s an endless battle.

Blogs are a marathon, not a sprint. If you want to be successful, you’re got to play day in, day out to establish your place within the blogopshere. (Note: Success can be defined by how much advertising revenue generated, a higher personal brand, readership (number of readers or the number of engaged readers), new friends, and new opportunities that come along that you’d otherwise never get to see).

Personally – and I’m biased having blogged pretty much every day for five years – blogging is like having a second wife. It demands your attention, you have to treat it well, work your relationship, evolve to changes, and make time for each other. In the end, it may not make you rich but there lots of other great benefits for being committed.

More: The New York Times had an article in yesterday’s paper looking at how bloggers can lose their enthusiasm for all kinds of different reasons.

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