Twitter vs Facebook: Which One Has A Better ROI ?

So in your opinion, which service gives you the most bang for your buck ?

Personally I would have to go with Twitter. I consider myself an early adopter of technology and spend a lot of time on the web checking new things out. I would also say, that like many others like me online, what we find cool one week, has faded from our minds the next week. Here is what I mean.

Typically in that “Honeymoon” period I find sites like Facebook and LinkedIn pretty fascinating. I spend lots of time poking around, joining different groups, immersing myself in the subculture of the site. But after a while my head of steam seems to fade. I cannot quite put my finger on the reason, but like any relationship, the allure fades. That is really what we have with these social networking sites, a relationship. So recently I made my foray into Facebook. I will not say that I have not gotten any return on my investment, I did make some friends and contacts, but for the most part, my focus faded. I noticed that a lot of the groups I was involved with had little to no activity. You would look into the discussion boards, only to find that the last activity had been weeks prior. I posted many topics only to have little to no feedback. On top of it all I found it really annoying to have to drill down into each individual group to see what was going on. I wish there was the ability to have one central location that showed the recent activity across all of your groups (it probably exists I just don’t know about it). Needless to say, I found myself checking back less and less ….

As for Twitter, I am at the other end of the spectrum. I will admit, at first I thought Twitter was a mere fad. Little snippets of text flying through the ether. But I was missing the point, missing the small nuances that make Twitter great. Twitter is so much more. I have found that as far as my investment, my return has been far greater than these other full blown social network sites. I have made the most contacts, kept up more with them, and also been able to use it as a tool to find and release news of note. Who would have thought so much could be done with a mere 140 characters? Best yet, I have do not have to dig through pages to get the relevant information. On my Macbook I user Twitterrific. It sits on my desktop and I see exactly what is going on with the people I follow in real time. Have a question ? Ask it and I guarantee you will have your answer i no time. It keeps me abreast of events in the area I am interested in and also lets me meet people I would not have otherwise had the opportunity to meet. I am working on s small startup venture, and I know it will be an invaluable tool for feedback and spreading the word. Business or personal, Twitter allows you to adapt how you use it on a per tweet basis. One of your tweets may be a friendly hello to your followers and the next a blog post you want the world to read.

I think as Twitter and its users continue to evolve its uses will expand exponentially. Sites like Facebook will become too big, too bulky, while the streamline micro-blogging tools will provide just the right thing to satisfy our never diminishing need for small fast segments of input and output. How many of us scan through thousands of RSS feed items a day only to really read the headline and the 2 sentence description? We rarely actually read the entire article, we have been conditioned to the news snippet and thats what Twitter now affords us. The ability to maintain our networks, social, personal, and business in a 140 character burst.