Social Networking Journal

Twitter vs. Instant Messaging

Twitter has certainly been a bomb in the internet and the micro blogging platform it offers is getting more and more popular each day. It continues to break into new markets, and, at least it looks so, is starting to bite its share off of Instant Messaging clients as AIM has recently dropped 2 million users, leaving it with 28 million. Whether or not AIM lost its users to Twitter exclusively, remains to be seen, however, there certainly are a lot of advantages that Twitter offers against IM’s like GTalk, MSN, AIM and Skype. Another question rises – will Twitter manage to overcome its shortcomings against them?

The use of Twitter was incorporated in various Instant Messaging services back when Twitter started in 2006. The IM support was discontinued as Twitter gained some degree of popularity without the aid of Instant Messengers. Twitter has a lot more to offer than IM services. For example, new people to talk to. Your contact list in IM might be restrictive if you want to meet new people with shared interests. Twitter has no such restrictions – you can talk to anyone you like to talk and probably someone who you just couldn’t reach via IM.

One of the reasons why the use of Twitter has risen is the extensive availability of Twitter desktop applications. They offer almost the same degree of customization as IM’s do and usually allow the user to use other social networking sites with them. For example, Tweetdeck, a Twitter desktop application, also supports receiving Facebook updates, and will add the support of other applications in near future. The sense of a desktop application also gives the feel of an IM, so the user gets comfortable with the new service early. It’s arguable whether or not the Twitter applications will gain more popularity, but the applications are something that a casual IM user would probably be more interested in than posting from the web.

There are, however, some exclusive things that Instant Messaging services offer, like a real-time chat. Twitter conversations can long for days, with one party withdrawing from the conversation whenever they like to, and recover them whenever they like to, which is quite unsuitable for any kind of business, except for working at the post. Also, Twitter will probably never have Voice over Internet Protocol support like the instant messengers do, but the most important thing is the word “instant” in “instant messenger”

What it comes down to is this – whatever you may be using Twitter for, remember that it’s just a tool for tweeting aka microblogging. And altogether, microblogging means that Twitter is somewhere between blogging, instant messaging and social networks. People used IM’s for the sake of meeting new people and creating superficial relationships just because there wasn’t anything else available. But now there is, and it looks like that the IM’s are going to lose at least some of their users to Twitter – how much – it’s entirely up to the current trends of the users.