The Coming Facebook-Twitter Collision

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Advantages to Each

There are some key differences between the sites. It's far easier to find people on Facebook. Most of the time you can tell if it's actually them. Facebook also has more capacity for sharing videos and photos without forcing you to link out to other applications.

One of Twitter's greatest advantages lies in its so-called asynchronous nature. Relationships with others go one-way on Twitter. Someone can choose to "follow" you to get your updates, but you don't have to follow them. That simple distinction allows for a range of possibilities in what people can do on the site. For instance, a celebrity can broadcast to fans but only follow the people he or she really knows. Facebook's recent changes make it easier for a celebrity or company or organization to build this kind of one-way communication, but if I want to be friends with an individual, that person still needs to accept my friend request. So Twitter still holds an advantage as far as individuals are concerned.

Another important Twitter feature lies in its stellar search technology—bought from Summize, a small company in Washington, D.C.—that allows you to track real-time conversations outside your network.

To be fair, Twitter and Facebook are on a slow collision course. This is not a zero-sum game. A lot of people will use both sites, and there are a good many people in the world who still aren't on either. Facebook has about 150 million users, compared with Twitter's 6 million. Both companies are wise to focus on their own products and markets and less on competing with each other. Indeed, they complement each other in key ways. You can update your Facebook status from Twitter, and arguably Twitter gets a marketing platform every time someone's Twitter stream spills over onto their Facebook News Feed.

In the near term, it's Google that should be more worried about both. If the last round of the Web was about organizing information, Web 2.0 is about organizing people. The Google-backed OpenSocial initiative that creates a common coding language for social media sites and their developers isn't going to cut it. Neither did Jaiku, a Twitter clone Google bought and recently shut down. Maybe the possible threat explains why Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Mar. 3 called Twitter "poor man's e-mail."

I see that coming back to haunt him. My hunch is Twitter represents a lot more than that. And if anyone wants a shot at beating Facebook at its own game, Twitter is the property to get you there.

Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years, most recently covering technology for BusinessWeek. Her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, was published by Gotham Books in May 2008. She is also Silicon Valley host of Yahoo Finance's Tech Ticker.

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