Facebook vs Twitter
Facebook’s open communication channels benefit the closeness of friend groups better than Twitter
In today’s world, it is very common for a person to live in one country while most of his best friends and closest relatives are spread far and wide across the globe. The means to keep in touch may be many, but doing so on a regular basis is tough.
So when such is the situation, what really helps us strengthen ties with the ones we love? There’s one simple answer: Connect with friends, relatives and colleagues on Facebook.
According to a study led by Emilio Ferrara, a post-doctoral research fellow at Indiana University, the social network’s structure naturally promotes stronger friendships.
Millions of Facebook users and their social relationships were researched and analysed, measuring community sizes, intimacy within friend circles and interactions using the Label Propagation Algorithm, a statistical formula that collects and processes information from large-scale networks.
The main finding was that “Facebook users are driven by the network’s very structure to group themselves into a large number of small communities, all joined together into the monolith we call Facebook by their social connections.” The report also stated, "We discovered that the average degree of communities and their size put into evidence the tendency to self-organization of users into small- or medium-size communities well-connected among each other."
Facebook promotes more open communication channels, which benefit the closeness of friend groups. It is essentially a closely-knit group. Friends of friends are also more likely to connect on Facebook, broadening the already existing networks.
Twitter connections, on the other hand, are weaker because information can be disseminated in tweets without interaction. Also, most of the connections are more or less random, most being only acquaintances than real friends. Communication is not as effective and interactive as it is on Facebook.
Well, looks all the time being spent on Facebook isn’t that big a waste after all.
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