Social Media Brand Loyalty?

17 August 2009 668 views Comments

We all know about brand loyalty. We either like Coke or Pepsi, PC or Mac, Google or Bing…but are social medium fan-bases divided by brand loyalty as well? Or will they become divided as networks like Facebook and Twitter continue to evolve?

Last week, Facebook bought Friendfeed and launched Facebook light – two things which somehow seem to be moves made in an attempt to “beat” Twitter. Each week, we see articles on Mashable, TechCrunch, and others about which medium has a better real-time search, which is growing faster, etc, etc, etc. But are these two social mediums on a crash course which will one day force users to choose one or the other?

I can’t say for sure, but with millions of users and ad dollars at stake, I have to think that the creators of these popular networking sites are hoping to be the best, and thus win out in the “brand” loyalty battle.

What do you think? Are you more loyal to Facebook? Twitter? …or any of the other popular networking sites?

Me personally – I’m more of a Twitter girl than anything else. While I use many social mediums for different reasons, Twitter does get the majority of my online networking time. I have to admit that I can barely go a day without writing a tweet. On the other hand, I only check Facebook a few times a week.

Your thoughts? Is there social media brand loyalty? If not, will there be one day?

Nicole VanScoten

Thanks for all the great comments :)

Mike Schaffer

I think some degree of loyalty does exist, but it's not so much BRAND loyalty as it is functionality loyalty.

Twitter and Facebook have completely different uses. If you want to share vacation pics with friends, Facebook is much better for that. If you want to poll professional peers on any topic, Twitter is going to be more appropriate.

I like to think of Twitter as housing thought-leaders, whereas Facebook is a catch-all for anyone interested in social networking.

Glorimar Perez

I think that as particular social media tools become more and more integrated into our daily lives that brand loyalties will grow, but we're not quite at that point yet. We're still looking at tools as they come out and adjusting our usage quickly. I started out back in the day on MySpace, and moved to Facebook and Twitter. I'm still adjusting how I use these to find what mix works best for me.

Martin of elocallisting

I am all for twitter and I rarely use facebook accept for family and close friends. Twitter is a powerful professional networking tool that I use day in and day out! However with all the down time I find my self jumping onto facebook more. So if twitter isn't careful or doesn't fix the user experience problems, you will find more people migrate that way!

Sheema

Great post! I think it depends on what you use Twitter, Facebook, or anything other social network for. I use Facebook to keep in touch with family & friends, whereas Twitter is for networking and to grow as a Communications professional. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with Facebook.

Lauren Fernandez

It all depends on the person - just as it depends on the brand - for how much and what social media platforms they use. I think that there will be a divide, but it all comes down to the type of person and what professional/personal goals you hope to obtain from social media.