As a social web participant, technologist and consultant, I am being asked on a daily basis my thoughts on Twitter and Facebook for business. I definitely have opinions about the uses of both platforms, and the suitability of each to various types of marketing and relational/conversational business networking activities. I was asked by a merchant’s association of which I am a member to share some insight on the social web strategies I see working, but of course before any such discussion can be meaningful, there has to be a short summary of the features and benefits of each platform. And the shorter this preface is the better, in my opinion.

So in an attempt to cram it into a nutshell for my upcoming audience, I was comparing and contrasting the ways in which the two networks build connections. The starting point for a connection can often be quite revealing about what sorts of conversations will be able to emerge as mutual participation and engagement ensues. If I meet someone in the context of  being “a friend of the family”, I am likely to explore radically different topics of discussion than if I met the same person in the context of “having the same interests”.

Facebook’s primary connection mode seems designed to bring together people who already know each other, or are very likely to know one another in an existing relational context, whether past or present. A slightly secondary mode is the locale-centric one, in which Facebook seeks to center activity and connections based on the reported location of its members. Both modes suppose an existing geographic or sociographic connection in order for the system to perform well in suggesting friends. And indeed, many if not most of the prompts and activities around which Facebook revolves suppose that the connections occurring within networks have some real-world mirror or context.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the memes and recurring quizzes, etc. that get passed around. Without already knowing something of the individuals participating in these activites, the answers and the exercises themselves would be of little interest, consequence or value to the group.

Twitter, on the other hand, with fewer guided activity options (and subsequently a LOT of general confusion about what Twitter really is) can be much like Facebook, in terms of mirroring confined and pre-existing real-world social connection graphs, but it isn’t designed to limit or promote only those social spheres. In fact, Twitter seems to be harder to use in that way than Facebook, because of the lack of recommendations and six-degrees-of-separation sort of ready-made connections. To find people to follow on Twitter, or to find followers, one would typically start with an interest or subject matter that mattered in their world. With little in the way of formal introduction or pre-existing awareness of an individual, connections can be made, based on little else than a mutual appreciation of a topic, interest or body of knowledge. In this way, Twitter tolerates more anonymity during interactions in the network, and thus can be an appealing place to be a genuine and transparent brand with a valuable voice in the conversations already occurring there. One does not have to know much about someone before choosing to follow them, because the value of the connection is not based on felt associations, but rather based upon a knowledge transaction.

In other words, Facebook networks are based upon WHO you know, and Twitter networks are based upon WHAT you know.

I am thrilled to have finally come up with a “10 words or less” comparison/explanation of the two services. But probably no more thrilled than my audience will be.

Those of you who took high school economics will no doubt recall the way in which a product market works: we start with design, then production and manufacturing, then distribution, advertising and finally purchase and consumption (I invite any high school economics teachers to correct my over-simplified explanation of complicated market dynamics in the comments below).

As a company involved in mostly early stage market activites – media design and content creation, audio and video production – we rely on other companies in our market to supply us with manufacturing and distribution, and ultimately we need consumers to complete our existence.

These days, audio and video distribution is easily accomplished via the web. But in a crowded marketplace with more choices than ever before, consumers rely on search to bring them what they want, when they want it.

For this reason, it makes a lot of sense for Google to offer a media server gadget, essentially bridging the gap between the TV set and the vast content offered on the net.

Sure there are other media player/content services out there that promise to deliver web content to the home theater, but none have the power of Google’s search to find virtually any audio, video or photo file on the web. And while Google is notoriously boring in the GUI department, no one can argue their superiority in their stock and trade. Combine that with the content from Google’s subsidiary YouTube, and this is clearly the future.

For now, it’s a Windows-only gadget, and judging from the comment thread, it is not without some beta-stage issues. Still, who can blame Google for testing the waters and extending the usefulness of its search to the TV?

(Self-Promotional Addendum: I think this gadget would be made all the more amazing if the content it displayed became participatory through the CrowdAbout Social Media Player technology!)

Harkins Creative produced a site intro video for Planet2025.tv. 18 months later, it is still being used on the home page of their site, and today we received notice that it had just been announced as a Panda Awards finalist in the Wildscreen Film Festival! Final judging will take place in October.

Below is the video entered into the New Media category:

I have to say that I have been for the idea of audio and video comments on blogs and social network sites since I first imagined them (and yes, it was long before Michael Arrington said he wanted them, and introduced them on his site. I’m not saying I was the first to think of them, though.). It was only a matter of time, and if my other development company hadn’t been so busy building even cooler audio and video social technologies, I might have gotten around to building it myself.

Many opinions, both FOR and AGAINST video comments, have run amok over the past few weeks. I have already said I like the idea, and despite what the SEO pundits say, I think they CAN be a good strategy for getting your site noticed.

But what interests me even more is the clear divide emerging between those that feel that the web is destined to be a multimedia playground, and those that would rather keep it text-based, at least when it comes to the “tried and true” activities of blogging, forums and wikis (as if they’ve been around long enough to be called ingrained!).

The web is supposed to do things. Commenting, by its interactive nature, fulfills the promise of new media, but to say that video commenting misses the boat is a little disingenuous, if you ask me.

Allow me to engage a fraction of your cognitive surplus for a few minutes as you watch this amazing presentation, and then let’s have a discussion:

Much has been said on this subject elsewhere, but I’d like to look at the emerging culture of participatory content in light of its impact on business communications. Actually I just want to dream out loud for a few minutes about what it would be like to find a company willing to take the chance on ditching their carefully controlled, canned brand experience, and give their own consumers, clients and customers a real opportunity to participate. To participate in the creation of the brand, not just in the canned homogenized experience the brand proffers.

What would that look like? Just wipe the slate clean of decades of brand management, and ask the world to develop the new campaign from scratch. En masse. Without a single top-down directive or offhand suggestion in sight.

But ask yourself, which is inherently more risky, spending millions building a brand experience that relatively few people embrace, or letting the intended market itself tell you and others how they prefer to experience things?