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Twitter: The Bruce Springsteen of Social Media

Stock quotes in this article: FB, P, LNKD, MCD 

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I need to clear up some confusion.

Why Twitter Will Live and Facebook Will Die will go down as one of my most well-received articles of all time. Between it's original publication at TheStreet and rebroadcasts at CNBC and Forbes, it has been shared thousands of times across social networks.

Initially, the response surprised me. But then, I thought about why an article arguing that Twitter will outlast Facebook (FB) would resonate so strongly with so many people. I came to three primary conclusions:

Facebook Hate

A general hatred towards Facebook exists in the public opinion marketplace.

The media deserves credit for this.

Prior to the IPO, news outlets ran with the fluff storyline: The Facebook IPO will turn millions of the social network's users into investors.

As it did leading up to the housing crash, the media failed to critically assess the situation. Most reports on the IPO implied Facebook could do nothing but go up. Outside of CNBC and several financial and tech websites, I don't think any mainstream outlet reported the obvious warning signs, such as risks in the S-1 or the inevitability of insider selling.

When the Facebook story did not play as scripted, the media turned on its revenge reflex. Facebook became the object of intense scorn.

Looking back, it's only natural that thousands would rally around any association between Facebook and death.

I Nailed It

I will write a separate article on this. It deserves one.

But, in a nutshell, I nailed an emerging, if obvious trend. Twitter is truly becoming the modern-day version of the newspaper for an exponentially growing number of people.

The Notion of Long-Term

We all have different conceptions of time. Long-term might mean a few months to one person, a few years to the next and a couple of decades to another. Personally, I use all three classifications. It depends on the circumstances.

In most of the articles I write, particularly ones that focus on buying and selling stocks, I define long-term as a few years. When I attempt to envision the future, I usually categorize long-term as longer than that. In a discussion of longevity vis-a-vis Twitter and Facebook, we're talking something closer to 10 or 20 years.

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