[peterjs]

I can't help myself, but Twitter seems to me like a subset of Facebook. Something like ICQ, AIM, or Yahoo Messenger is to Facebook Chat or Skype.

It came at the right time in the US, but it takes some time for these things to get abroad. While it arrived to Central Europe, Facebook had enough users and introduced features like Followers etc. Today, Twitter is solely used by a marginal tech/hip/geek community here.

And advertising goes where people go. The question is, whether this evidence suggests that the Twitter of today can't compete directly with Facebook, and it's success is based on acquiring users before FB matched it in functionality. How stable this user base is? Is it a similar case as with the chat applications?

Anecdotal evidence - a friend of mine just asked, whether one should invest in Twitter... on Facebook.

[radical_vamsi]

Fair question to ask! Although would agree with 'subset of Facebook' argument but therein also lies its beauty. If we look at Facebook today and filter marginal things away its used primarily to 1) Share updates and 2) Share pics. Twitter took the first point and made it better. Instagram took 2nd point and made it better. Both did well. So sometimes (in fact most of the times) its about taking only one feature and doing it extremely well and I will give credit to Twitter for this. As for the question related to a stable user base is concerned it feels people will find usage for both kind of platforms, general ones and very specific ones!

[RockyMcNuts]

At the risk of stating the obvious, Twitter is a directed graph (one-way follow), while Facebook is (mostly) undirected (two-way follow), I have to friend you and you have to agree.

Twitter is more for the digerati, Facebook is more for the masses.

Facebook has more of a mission to capture and monetize all your social/personal info, Twitter is a little more narrowly focused.