Facebook vs. Twitter

In the world of social networks, Facebook looks like the swift and cunning hare, Twitter the leisurely and careful tortoise. This race is not judged by speed but by a stopwatch with a much longer lifespan, one that is tied to trust.

To run so quickly, Facebook exploded because it slurped up endless amounts of data about its users. It often did so in ways that earned it scorn from those worried about privacy and the implications of personal data used by others. Again and again, Facebook 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. As a result, Facebook users tiptoe through the site on eggshells. A recent CNBC poll found that “59 percent of respondents said that they had little to no trust in Facebook to keep their information private.” Eventually, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to stop Facebook, but it was eight years too late. Twitter, on the hand, has taken an opposite approach. The company has never made its users’ private information public when it has introduced new features. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has not endlessly changed its privacy policy. Users of the site trust Twitter more. The stark difference between the two companies’ approaches to privacy is evident with product introductions.