Which is Better for Your Bank Account; Twitter or Facebook?

Lately, I have been debating which social networking website, Twitter or Facebook, is better for my financial bottom line. I work full time at an office job, write articles for the internet and am also busy with a family which includes a husband and two kids. So there is only a small amount of time built into my day to play on Twitter and Facebook.

Most of my offline reading and online blog favorites are related to the topic of personal finance. Making, saving and growing money has become an important priority.

In October of 2008 I finally joined Facebook. Almost immediately, old friends from camp and high school as well as mere acquaintances friended me. In the beginning, I was hooked on Facebook. It was so new and interesting to catch up with people from the past and to see what everyone looked like twenty years later.

However, I soon realized how much of a time waster and downer it was. I was constantly bombarded with status updates on how so and so was taking a nap at 2pm in the afternoon and how such and such just returned from a vacation in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, I was working every day, had no time for naps and hadn't been to the Caribbean recently.

Knowing how leisurely and comfortable other people's lives were was bad for my marriage. I would start to take it out on my husband that I was not a housewife of leisure (or a New Jersey housewife, since we live in New Jersey three towns away from the real New Jersey housewives).

So I gradually decreased my Facebook activity and checked in only from my Blackberry once in the morning and once at night. I found myself not caring what everyone else was doing on Facebook and gained back some productive time periods.

Then, in May of 2009, I couldn't stop reading about Twitter. Articles and stories about Twitter were everywhere, in the old fashioned black and white newspaper, on the internet, on cable news shows (Anderson Cooper always reads his Twitter messages on the air).

References to Twitter were popping up everywhere. Twitter was outpacing Facebook, hands down. All the hype stated that Twitter is the wave of the future and will replace all other social networks.

I just had to be in the action involving Twitter, tweets and tweet-ups. So I signed up for a free Twitter account (click here to reach my Twitter page). I already knew that none of my close Facebook friends was on Twitter.

The reason I knew this was that one day I had posted a status update on Facebook and asked, "Jane wants to know if anyone uses Twitter." I received three replies and two of them said they didn't know what Twitter was. The third person replied that she is not a Twitter member.

However, I knew that I would figure out how to use Twitter to my advantage. When I logged on, I didn't know who to follow. I remembered that Trent Hamm, who writes 'The Simple Dollar" blog and Penelope Trunk, who writes "The Brazen Careerist" blog, are on Twitter. So I followed them.

Then I looked up Associated Content, the article website that I write for, and started to follow some other Associated Content writers and Content Managers. Next, I searched for Twitterers who tweet about my favorite vacation area, the Delaware beaches and Ocean City, Maryland. I also follow people who tweet links to interesting information about personal finance, wealth building and money.

You get the picture. On Twitter, you can follow anyone you want and that person doesn't have to "confirm" that you are a friend, as on Facebook. I have found that the people I follow on Twitter give the gift of information. I enjoy the inspirational quotes, links to helpful advice on personal finance and news from Delaware.

The ultimate way that Twitter helps me financially is that is allows me to share my tweets with my Twitter followers and also the entire population of the Twitter community. For those who aren't familiar with Twitter, you have access to everyone's tweets and everyone on Twitter can also see your tweets.

The website I write for, Associated Content, pays upfront for article submissions which meet certain guidelines. They also pay monthly according to how many page views your articles receive. In other words, the more exposure your article receives, the larger your monthly payment.

There is an application on Associated Content called "auto-post" which automatically sends a post to your Twitter page with a link to your article as soon as one of your articles is published. This auto-post feature is a great way for me to promote my articles and garner more page views.

I believe that doing all of these activities on Twitter will ultimately help my financial bottom line. I can find out about interesting personal finance websites, keep up with the happening in my favorite places and gain more followers who might want to read my articles.

There are hundreds of other uses for Twitter but I just listed a few of my favorites that help me financially. Facebook, what have you done for me lately?