What is the right social media presence for you: Facebook v. Twitter?

On Tuesday, Silicon Alley Insider had the following headline: "Facebook Finaly Lands 'The World's Biggest Marketer.'" P&G to open a Silicon Valley office; spending princely sums on Facebook. Yawn -- Interesting but hardly a shocker.

What was more interesting were statements P&G made, demonstrating how it--and, if we can extrapolate, big brands, generally--thinks about the differences between various forms of social media. The article quotes someone at P&G as saying "And while P&G's thought leaders expressed some skepticism about the efficacy of Facebook's 'engagement ads,' they certainly view Facebook as a must-have for digital advertising and brand building." A paragraph later, another quote:

Mr. Hornik contrasted the enthusiastic outlook on Facebook to a less-enthusiastic one by P&G executives toward Twitter. "They described Twitter as 'much more like television than one might think.' To P&G, Twitter is a great broadcast medium -- it is best for one-to-many communications that are short bursts of timely information," he wrote. "P&G folks do not view it as particularly relevant to what they are doing on the brand-building and advertising side. ... They do not believe that Twitter will ever approach the value they can get out of a Google or Facebook."

I am one of the two people in class who raised his hand to the "how many of you aren't on Facebook?" question. I used to be on Facebook, but commited FB Suicide last summer upon realizing that it felt not that fulfilling and rather like a ball and chain. By contrast, I am on Twitter, and find it fascinating how varied are people's understanding of Twitter. Some view it merely as a stand-alone "What are you doing?" box (a la Twitter), and indeed I think that's how many people begin to use it initially. However, there are a number of vibrant communities on Twitter self-organized around topics of mutual interest. I, for instance, follow a lot of local tech entrepreneurs and VCs and love the news-sharing, idea bouncing, and collective creativity that goes on. I think these communities and this usage pattern is less prevalent on Facebook (though I'd be hard-pressed to *prove* this to someone who disagrees).

From the perspective of the advertiser, this is an interesting difference. My working hypothesis is that Facebook probably offers advertisers more structured data with which to target ads toward certain demographics. However, as an entrepreneur trying to find customers who love my product and get their feedback and turn them into advocates, the other half of my working hypothesis is: Twitter is where more substantive conversations happen, and is therefore a better means for: (1) learning what customers think about you, and (2) discovering early-vangelists.

If my working hypotheses are true, so what? Implications: (1) Facebook is a great place for big brands who have found their footing, understand who is their target customers, and need targetted reach. (2) Twitter is a great place for fledgling ventures in search of product-market fit, still refining their offering, trying to discover their ideal customer, and looking for people to evangelize them in substantive conversations (vs. "friending" Pringles...).