Online Marketing Blog from metrocafe311

Over the last few weeks and months there have been a lot of new developments within the social web. Things are moving at such a fast pace that it seems pretty hard keep up at times. For this blog post I’m going to focus on Twitter and Facebook. The reasons for this is that, these social networks are evolving at the fastest rate and secondly they are the two most relevant social networks, boasting 500 million and 165 millions users respectively.

Twitter have been very busy this year slowly introducing a lot of new features. Some of which have been moves to monetise the site and others have been to increase usability. In April this year it introduced promoted tweets. This means that companies can tap into a whole new user base that was shut off to them before. For a fee (sometimes up to $100,000) brands can pay to have tweets appear in the list of trending topics. These tweets are like any other, they can be replied too or re-tweeted but they remain at the top of the screen for as long as they were being “promoted”.

On the 14th of June this year Twitter officially launched Twitter Places, two months before Facebook Places was launched. This allows users to see where people they follow are tweeting from adding to the level of information being created. It also facilitates Foursquare and Gowalla integration. A month later Twitter introduced the “discover who to follow” function meaning that we can find people posting content that is more valuable to us.

All of these changes were subtle and happening gradually over time but what we didn’t know is that Twitter was building up to a complete overhaul of its user interface. On the 15th of September the world was given the New Twitter. When this was introduced Twitter got a lot of stick for this being too bold a move in the direction of becoming a fully fledged social network as opposed to the information network it considers itself to be. But in my opinion the new twitter really works. Yes it has formed multi media partnership so some videos and photos play and appear within Twitter itself as opposed to redirecting us to the external website, but this hasn’t happened at the expense of the user experience. It’s a lot better.

One thing they have introduced which I don’t think is in the best interest of the user is Promoted Accounts. Very similar to promoted tweets companies can now pay to appear at the top of users lists of who to follow. Companies equate numbers of followers to reach and influence which is correct to a certain extent. However I don’t think that people will be too happy about seeing companies in their profiles constantly. Especially since the recommendations will clearly be labeled “promoted”.

Another big clue that Twitter is getting serious about monetising its network came two weeks ago when founder and then CEO Evan Williams stood down to take over Product Direction. Williams has been replaced by former Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo.

Facebook have also been busy. On the 18th of August they launched Facebook Places, a geolocation based extension to its existing platform that competes directly with Foursquare. It still isn’t available here unfortunately but it was released in the UK about two weeks ago so hopefully it won’t be to long before it gets here. You can read about some of its features here.

Another exciting development is that facebook are apparently developing a phone. Techcrunch reported this on the 19th of September so stay tuned it could get very interesting. There have also been rumors that Facebook are in negotiations with Skype to enter into a joint venture of some kind.

Finally facebook announced last week an overhaul of its interface. Not to be outdone by Twitter facebook want to improve its user experience. The fundamental shift will be from profiles (which we all have now) to “Groups”. These will be smaller more intimate spaces which you can join and leave as you choose. These basically become mini profiles within your overall profile. It seems that the new interface will give us more control over who sees what when we post things to designated groups.

The above paragraph is a tiny snippet of what Mark Zuckerberg and his team announced in the live press conference held in Paulo Alto two weeks ago. To see that press conference in full follow this link: http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive/ and click on the video named “Facebook Announcement Oct. 6, 2010″.

I think because of the vast difference in user numbers Facebook will undoubtedly continue to be more influential, particularly in Ireland. Don’t get me wrong I think Twitter is great and should be used by businesses to communicate and interact with users. However I still think until Twitter numbers increase both here and abroad Facebook will continue to be more relevant. What do you guys think? Twitter or Facebook? If you think I’ve left anything out please leave a comment. It’s always great to get feedback.