Why Twitter Will Live and Facebook Will Die

Pick an interest. Choose a hobby. Think of your passions. Look up your line of work. Follow the right people. Interact appropriately. Twitter adds to your quality and experience of life in myriad aspects.

Next to LinkedIn (LNKD), there's not a more utilitarian social media site than Twitter. But, unless you're unemployed or otherwise on the hunt for a job or some other specific networking activity, you ultimately use LinkedIn the way you use Facebook. To collect connections. To reunite with blasts from the past.

Twitter's 140-character limit stokes its quality and appeal. It allows the most clever folks to break through. In fact, the worst thing that happened to Twitter is that app called "TwitLonger."

You can use TwitLonger if you feel the need to go beyond 140 characters. That turns Twitter into something closer to Facebook. It dumbs it down.

Facebook is a sustainable fad. In other words, it serves a purpose. It has a much brighter future than its bandwagon-jumping critics think. But, it will never be in Twitter's league in any capacity, from being useful to making the smooth transition to an IPO, assuming Apple (AAPL) doesn't buy Twitter before it goes public.

When I claim Facebook will die, I'm talking five, 10, 15, maybe 20 years from now. In our world, that's an eternity. Twitter, meantime, is everything the television news networks wish they could be -- instant, relevant and used heavily by a relatively young audience.

If Twitter cannot monetize that, it needs to immediately start a search, on LinkedIn, for better salespeople.

At the time of publication, the author was long FB.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

Rocco Pendola is a private investor with nearly 20 years experience in various forms of media, ranging from radio to print. His work has appeared in academic journals as well as dozens of online and offline publications. He uses his broad experience to help inform his coverage of the stock market, primarily in the technology, Internet and new media spaces. He has taken a long-term approach to investing, focusing on dividend-paying stocks, since he opened his first account as a teenager. Pendola, 37, is based in Santa Monica, Calif., where he lives with his wife and child.

« First ‹ Previous 1 2