Even though there are countless elements of Facebook that annoy practically every single user, there are also features that can be both useful and entertaining. Undoubtedly, its best feature is the fact that you can view anyone’s profile. Most of you probably spend at least an hour a week viewing people’s profiles, stalking them. Facebook is the only place in the world where you can stare at people’s pictures and read information about them without anyone knowing. On twitter, you can also view people’s profiles on twitter; however they are far less comprehensive and consist of only a small picture, the user’s location and a few lines of information about them.
Although it’s frustrating that you can’t stalk (or investigate, as we like to say) people on twitter, it is possible to read celebrities’ tweets. Almost all celebrities have a twitter account and by following them on twitter you can easily keep updated on what they’re doing. Who doesn’t want to know what Justin Bieber is up to? Another great thing about twitter is, as one user says, that you can “tweet without being trolled”, as twitter does not have a feature which allows you to comment on posts. It can be rather annoying when random people comment on your Facebook posts, or when people write sarcastic comments which they think sound great.
A limitation of twitter is that tweets are limited to just 140 characters. Even though it can be a little annoying that tweets need to be so short, it also prevents people from rambling about things we couldn’t care less about. Seriously, who doesn’t start pulling their hair out when they read long Facebook statuses about cancer? Honestly, writing a Facebook status about cancer won’t make a difference in any way.
But enough about twitter and Facebook, let’s get onto tumblr. Tumblr is like marmite, either you love it, hate it, or you don’t even know what it is. With approximately 42.6 million blogs, tumblr has the least users out of these social networking sites, but its visitors have increased by 218% from July 2010 to July 2011. For those of you that don’t have the joy of having a tumblr account, tumblr is a social networking site and micro blogging platform. Tumblr allows users to keep blogs and post and reblog photo, text, chat, video and audio posts to their followers. Getting a new follower is a moment of sheer joy and happiness which non-tumblr users will never experience. One tumblr user also says, “It’s nice to get to know random people on tumblr”. Although it probably sounds like the weirdest thing ever to a non-tumblr user, it’s quite normal for people on tumblr to make friends with their followers and talk to them multiple times a day by messaging one another on tumblr. “Its creepy to get to know random people, what if they’re 40 year old men?, one non-tumblr user says. Though it’s possible that the people you’re talking are 40 year old men, it’s still completely safe to talk to them since none of your personal information, such as your name, is displayed on your blog. One tumblr user even posted a picture of a screenshot of a facebook status saying “I trust complete strangers on tumblr more than you hypocritical (bleep)”. And yes, it is possible to send anonymous hate mail on tumblr, however a tumblr user may only receive anonymous hate mail if they have enabled anonymous messages. So which social network is really the best? Well, that’s up to you to decide, but for the perfect social networking experience, use all three sites.