(Disclaimer: I work for Facebook. Opinions herein are my own and not Facebook's.)

I put together a little Twitter search crawl at work to scroll results of a 'Facebook' search. It's extremely valuable to understand what people are saying about you or your work. You can get honest feedback and then you can take that and try to understand what drives someone to have a particular piece of feedback. Once you have an understanding, you can begin to fix whatever issues there may be causing negative feedback. I don't pretend that Facebook is perfect. There is plenty to do and gaining a mass-consensus on what the biggest pain points are is a big help. If you don't do searches on Twitter or even the web about your company, I highly recommend you do and try to understand what the results mean.

Aside from getting various random feedback on how people use the service, I've also seen a big theme in the last two weeks since I started. Many people are comparing Facebook and Twitter as if they were the same thing and making predictions that Facebook will topple in 2011. I'm not any good at predictions, but let's just say I'm pretty secure in Facebook's prospects for 2011. As for the comparing, I also see a trend with the #iprefer hashtag on Twitter with, unshockingly, most people on Twitter claiming they prefer Twitter.

You don't have to choose. Why? Because Facebook and Twitter are not the same thing. Not even close. I think most people think they're more closely related to each other than they are because they both have the description of being a "social network". Absolutely, both are social networks, but Twitter has strengths in very different areas than Facebook has strengths. Neither can replace the other in current form. If one were suddenly to disappear tomorrow, there would be a huge void.

First, let's look at how relationships are formed on both services. On Twitter, relationships are one-way. Either I follow you and get all of your status updates or you follow me and get all of my status updates. Twitter doesn't require reciprocation, though many people do reciprocate to people they know in real life. This lightweight connection makes it very attractive for companies and celebrities who want to reach a mass-audience and still get some feedback since on Twitter you're not required to have an existing relationship with someone in order to mention them (which they can then see) or message them. On Facebook, the relationship is two-way. I friend you then you friend me and only then when both peers agree is there a relationship. Further, Facebook encourages that you only friend people you actually know in real life. This keeps the social graph useful to actual things you do in real life on a daily basis and maintains a basic expectation of privacy that one should have with their friends. As a side note, Facebook does offer a one-way relationship with "Pages" meant for businesses or personalities to be able to maintain this relationship and give updates without adding additional trusted relationships. So really, there are two types of relationships on Facebook but for the purposes of these writings, I'm focusing on person-to-person distinctions.

There is also a dividing line of authenticity between the two services. Facebook requires you to use your real name. Twitter, on the other hand, identifies users by a handle and doesn't require you to identify yourself at all. As a result, Twitter can be used far more anonymously and messages that propagate across it are generally held less accountable than things posted on Facebook where your real life reputation could be at stake. This is a key point between the two services. Depending upon your stance about online privacy, this may make or break your opinion about Facebook. The upside to it is that when you read a writing from someone who you know and trust, that writing is given a heavier weight than from someone you may not know personally at all and goes by a handle foreign to you.

Understandably, many people are fearful of putting their real identity "out there" on the Internet. Facebook does provide fairly diverse privacy settings that can limit what the outside world sees of your activity and includes granular, person-specific controls. It takes a lot more effort on the part of the user to configure compared to Twitter's private on/off switch, which blocks everyone from viewing your updates unless you authorize them, but the fact that there is less identifying information shared on Twitter allows it to have such basic privacy controls. Facebook's current privacy controls allow more flexibility and are a result of much trail and error and user feedback. Facebook doesn't have a flawless record when it comes to introducing new privacy controls and getting users to understand them fully. In the past year, Facebook has learned a lot about how to launch a new or enhanced feature and I'm pretty confident that Facebook's worst days of privacy issues are behind it. The polar difference between Facebook and Twitter's privacy controls is another key differentiator between the two.

Next, we'll look at what each service is. Twitter is, at heart, a communications tool. Its primary function is to pass messages (or "status updates") in a one-to-many fashion with as little frills as possible. While Facebook contains that same functionality, Facebook offers a vastly wider range of features and services. Facebook is a platform for other applications. It's a photo service, a video service, a forum service, a messaging service, etc., etc. The core functionality of Facebook is maintaining your identity online and applying that identity along with your connections to your friends (known as the "social graph") to any application that can be dreamt up and where that information would be useful. It can make things online more personal, more relevant and more involving. Put in that context, Twitter and Facebook couldn't be more different. Twitter is a communications tool that is very focused on delivering short messages. Facebook is a platform that can be used very generically to provide social functions to websites or applications. The scope is of each is a third key differentiator.

As side note to the first paragraph, a very useful way to use Twitter is for quickly gauging the pulse of mob mentality. Twitter offers a great search feature to do keyword searches across all non-private status updates. Facebook can not replicate this simply based on the way privacy is structured as noted earlier. As the diversity of the Twitter ecosystem expands, the search function becomes more of an invaluable real-time opinion research service.

Taken all together, the implication is clear. Facebook tends to be a more private venue for sharing with closer relationships than Twitter which tends to be a more public venue for sharing less identifiably with wider range of acquaintances. That's not to say people don't use either for the other, many people do, but as a generalized concept, I believe this to be correct. Many users tend to overlook this concept and instead focus on the feature set or what they see on the screen when they login. The intangibles are what gives each service its identity however and is what makes comparisons between the two or preferences somewhat irrelevant. I think that both Twitter and Facebook are doing their jobs very well and will continue to thrive throughout 2011 and beyond. Both services will continue to evolve of course. Twitter has done well with a slow rate of change and I think it would service them well to stay focused on the core of the product. Facebook, again, is the opposite as they rapidly rollout new and rethink old functionality. This strategy has also served Facebook well and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

I hope this has been a somewhat cogent argument as to why "Facebook vs. Twitter" obsessions are missing the point of what each service is and what they offer. Your mindset will likely more align you to one or the other, but if you want to open yourself up a little, you should really give the other a try. It may have something to offer you that you don't expect.