Key difference: Twitter and Facebook are two different social networking websites. They are essentially different in their makeup and the way that they are used. The main difference between the two is in the fact that while Facebook is a social networking service, Twitter is a social networking service and a microblogging service.

Twitter and Facebook are two different social networking websites. They are essentially different in their makeup and the way that they are used. The main difference between the two is in the fact that while Facebook is a social networking service, Twitter is a social networking service and a microblogging service.

Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in collaboration with his college roommates at Harvard University: Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It is currently owned and operated by Facebook, Inc., a public offering company headed by Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook is a service that allows users to keep in touch with their friends, uploading pictures, commenting on other people's status and pictures, writing on their walls, sending them messages, poking them, etc. Facebook also host games that people can play individually to collaborating with friends.

As stated previously Twitter is a social networking service and a microblogging service. It allows users to post a quick one sentence update of up to 140 characters known as "tweets". These tweets may let people know they are doing, where they are, or what’s currently on their mind.

The tweets can be viewed by any person, registered or unregistered. Registered people can follow other users in other to keep track of their tweets. It has been referred to as "the SMS of the Internet." The service was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July of the same year.

Currently, Facebook is the most popular social networking website in the world. It had over one billion active users as of September 2012. Similarly, as of 2012, Twitter had 500 million registered users. Twitter hosts 340 million tweets daily and handles over 1.6 billion search queries per day.

Both Twitter and Facebook are listed as one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet. Overall, according to Alexa traffic rank as of November 2012, Facebook was the second most popularly visited website after Google. While, Twitter ranked at number 10.

There are certain differences in the manner that each of these websites is used. Firstly, Facebook is mainly about social friendships, making connections with friends, family members, and other people. People use Facebook to keep track of friends and their lives.

Twitter, on the other hand, is more about real-time conversations, in which a person can tweet about important topics, people, and conversations that are relevant or interesting to them. Other people can then see and respond to these tweets and input their thoughts on the matter, to which the original tweeter can respond. Hence, people can have an ongoing discussion on the topic. In fact, about 92% of activity and engagement with Tweets happen within the first hour of that tweet.

On Facebook, however, people see photos or posts and comment on it, then others respond to it in a couple of hours, to whom another might respond days later. Hence, a conversation or comments can last up weeks or even months. Heck, sometimes people come across pictures from years ago and still comment on it.

Furthermore, tweets are always here and now, they are important and relevant, they are instant. Whereas, posts on Facebook may be about something that happened days age or weeks ago, or at times they may even be a generic repost or posting of random phrases.

Image Courtesy: thetechblock.com, andrewjonesmp.co.uk