Sunday, March 3, 2013


FACEBOOK Vs. TWITTER - THE RACE TO BUILD THE FASCI-NATION
As a small child I was always fascinated with fairy tales. My favorite is the Snow White and the Seven Little Dwarfs. I would often stand in front of my mirror and ask, "Who is the fairest in the land?" and pretend the mirror answered, "You are the fairest one of all".  I wondered what kind of algorithm the magic mirror would run to make me believe that I was the fairest one.
25 Years later it was surreal to meet my magic mirror in SallyHogshead, the speaker and author of FASCINATE.  She has developed a test that measures how the world sees you as a personal brand. The test gives a result as one of the 49 predefined archetypes based on 7 personality triggers namely Passion, Alarm, Mystique, Power, Prestige, Trust and Rebellion. I took the test and this time asked more realistically 'How can I fascinate the world?' And the mirror quickly replied, "I am the 'Evolutionary' with the primary trigger as 'Trust', secondary trigger as 'Rebellion' and dormant trigger as 'Mystique'.

The results were impressive but made me more inquisitive. I wondered how many such similar 'Evolutionaries' like me are out there? How will I fascinate my boss, my client and my customer amidst stiff competition from a similar archetype. Or even worse what if there is a superior archetype than mine?
If a pair of twin-archetypes, Facebook and Twitter took 'How To Fascinate' test I am guessing they both will be have primary trigger as 'Trust' and secondary trigger as 'Rebellion' and dormant trigger as 'Mystique'. Let's see how these two compete in a race to fascinate millions of people worldwide.

Here's the official Facebook and Twitter pitch to fascinate you
 
 
Beyond the initial pitch, Facebook, the center of your personal social network takes an early lead in building 1 billion users worldwide over 13 years. It is more personal information thirsty when it comes to creating your Facebook profile such as information about your school/college, family tree, interests and so on. You connect mostly with people you are familiar with. It is mired in the past as your personal story is out there on timeline. A longtime no see friend just needs to see a few albums to figure out how many kids do you have, what trips did you recently take, where are you working, and so on. But beyond a point Facebook updates like 'watching Silver Linings Playbook at AMC Times Square' or 'Feeling lazy to get up' do not fascinate me. So the frequency to log in on Facebook drops to just once a day. But yes, Facebook is much more flexible and versatile. You can upload pictures, videos, games, and apps to your profile; embed videos from YouTube; post calendar events along with a microblogging component.
Whereas the 7 year old Twitter, with its rapidly-growing user base, strong brand connectivity and positioning as the leading news and information-gathering network, is definitely challenging Facebook's audience size. Twitter - the center of now, is all about fun, speed and spontaneity. A brief intro and an email account is all you need to kick start your twitter account. I not only follow people I know but also comedians, musicians, athletes and celebrities I’ll never meet. Twitter, a microblogging service, at a cursory glance, only allows for text, more text, and even more text with links. Twitter updates are short and concise as they are limited to 140 characters only. It keeps the mystery going as you get to know people you follow slowly through their tweets or jokes or comments about news, fun articles and stuff about what's latest in immediate future. You are constantly curious to check what are the latest tweets about ?
Surprisingly, Twitter ends up fascinating people more when it comes to its consistent privacy policy. Time and again, Facebook has pushed the boundaries of people’s privacy by making things public that had once been declared private on its site. It continually opted people into new features that clearly overstepped the company’s original privacy agreements. Whereas, Twitter has never trespassed its users’ private information to  public even when it introduced new features. That's why millions of users including our favorite celebrities trust Twitter more.
Twitter is a sure winner as even top notch celebrities have embraced this platform over Facebook. Celebrities like Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake etc can easily break news to their fan base with the tap of a button. Kim Kardashian frequently uses Twitter to promote her projects – the most recent being her widely anticipated show with one of her sisters “Kourtney and Kim Take Miami” – and oftentimes, her fans (many of them also celebrities) do the work for her. All she has to do is retweet — such as the following example where Serena Williams did her bidding.


This race seems to be turning into a marathon in which only the best will survive. Similarly, when in the real world similar archetypes compete to fascinate same set of people, the winner is the one who is more versatile, more flexible and more agile to adapt to the new challenges and new circumstances. And remember winning a race is not an end in itself. As Sally Hogshead says "You need to fascinate in 9 secs to enter the door". The real struggle starts after you enter the door. And then, It is the persistent optimism and the endless efforts of never ever giving up which bears fascinating fruits of victory in the end.
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