Social Media Marketing: Facebook's Challenge to Twitter

You don’t need to pay attention to the social media marketing arena to know about Facebook and Twitter. If you generalize each one, Twitter is the one that uses “@mentions” to send your friends messages. But that distinction isn’t unique to just Twitter, now that Facebook is incorporating “@mentions” with Facebook Lite.

Facebook puts its own spin on the feature, which they refer to as tagging. Unlike Twitter, you’re not limited to just @mentioning other users. You can link to friends, groups, pages, and events. Additionally, if you choose to switch to Lite, it is more or less a cleaner, stripped version of the original Facebook.

As of today, Facebook Lite is now open internationally for all to try.

However, the internet is abuzz with talk that this is a direct attack on Twitter. How is that so and what does this mean for Twitter then?

1. More traffic for Facebook

Facebook is more interactive than Twitter because of the abundance of features it offers. Now, with the ability to tag friends in statuses, some suggest a portion of the public chatter on Twitter will move to Facebook’s larger user base.

This moves means Facebook could become the first place to check for breaking news. At the moment, Twitter is a great place for social media marketing because most of the buzz happens there first. If any major event occurs, Twitter is abuzz with tweets, covering every side of the story. The introduction of @mentions might make Facebook the new platform for this.

2. Third Party Apps Concentrate on Facebook, Not Twitter.

Soon, you will probably see ways for people to post their Facebook statuses to Twitter. Even though Facebook only has a Twitter application for Pages right now, there is potential for it to expand to the Profiles.

With that, developers will likely go to Facebook because of its larger user base. There are plenty of applications being produced for Twitter (like TweetDeck, TweetFeed, etc) to organize all your @mention needs. Now, this is a viable option for Facebook too.

3. Business Strategies

Many businesses have incorporated Twitter into their social media marketing as a way to reach out to consumers that may be unsatisfied with their product or service. Facebook has a larger network, and this opens the doors for businesses who want to interact with more individuals.

Of course, this is all speculation. But there is no doubt that Twitter will be impacted by this move. Now, the business of social media marketing is evolving. As with any business, adaptability will put you at the top of the food chain.

For those out there trying out social media marketing on these platforms—what do you think about this? How will this affect your marketing strategies? Will Facebook be your go-to platform for social media marketing optimization?

Written by Daisy K.