Social Media Platform Comparisons

Comments debate the fundamental differences in use cases, user dynamics, and social graphs between platforms like Facebook (friends and real-life connections), Twitter/Reddit (strangers, interests, and shitposting).

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20
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#1138
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
32
2008
86
2009
297
2010
329
2011
352
2012
323
2013
235
2014
157
2015
206
2016
306
2017
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2018
329
2019
242
2020
291
2021
416
2022
302
2023
229
2024
96
2025
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2026
2

Keywords

FB ONE HN YouTube DIY RSS UI facebook twitter facebook twitter friends social reddit fb like facebook instagram use facebook

Sample Comments

badrabbit Oct 23, 2021 View on HN

FB recommends and suggests content much like youtube except much more social. Twitter is closer to reddit than FB.

bikeshed Feb 14, 2020 View on HN

twitter is mostly anonymous users shitposting and dunking on each other.facebook is all your friends' racist friends yelling at you, interspersed with bizarre ads for products you'll never buy and sponsored links to phony news sites. it's a completely different dynamic and it's much more insidious.

unreal37 Jun 11, 2023 View on HN

Twitter and Reddit are messageboards. Like Hacker News. Every time they do something controversial, someone thinks Usenet needs to be reincarnated.Trying to monetize that at scale is hardddd.Facebook has got groups, yes. But they have instagram. Messenger. Whatsapp. They have my friends and family. They have my photos going back 10 years. Facebook is personal to many people.I don't see Twitter and Facebook being interchangeable.

praeivis Apr 28, 2015 View on HN

It's like compare Facebook and Twitter. Surely you can try compare them, but better just use whatever you like to use.

blinks Dec 15, 2012 View on HN

What's the point of Facebook? Twitter?

eecks Feb 6, 2016 View on HN

I don't understand moving from Facebook to Twitter (or vice versa) - they're completely different use cases.

_aeneas Mar 14, 2018 View on HN

Reddit and Facebook are completely different concepts. The former is a forum, the latter tries to digitize real-life friendships. The difference in MAUs might also be a hint, everything is easier at smaller scale.

phaikawl Oct 21, 2012 View on HN

How is it supposed to be different from Twitter, Facebook or ...?

deely3 Aug 28, 2023 View on HN

For you, what is a main difference between social networks as facebook and HN?

pjc50 Sep 11, 2017 View on HN

They're completely different things; Reddit is strangers, Facebook is people you know.