ideasarehere

The other day it just occured to me why Twitter is a better means of promotion than Facebook, not meaning advertising but “spreading the word”. The key is the default action, so to speak.

When someone posts something on Facebook, the default action to show your appreciation is to click the “Like” button. But this doesn’t create a movement (so it’s no literal ”pro-motion”), it’s a popularity feedback for the originator of the post because it stays within the boundaries of his circle of friends. The promotion happens when people click “Share”, so the post translates to their own circle — but that happens very rarely in comparison.

This is where Twitter does better, because it makes no sense to reply “I like your tweet” to the author. The only sensible thing you can do is re-tweet the original tweet (Twitter word for post), so now your followers will read it. Voilà, promotion.