"Did Facebook kill the blogging star?"

No, Twitter did. Twitter will surpass FB eventually. Just wait till money gets involved. The vast majority of people go on FB to waste time. Twitter is VASTLY superior when it comes to direct marketing and advertising either from the corporate giants through to your average punter who has a website to advertise or a product to sell.

Right now Twitter is working through ways to get corporations to pay for the privilege of directly targeting your wants and/or needs. Right now you can search key words and find out who says them and what they're saying about them. That means anything. Think up key words that would relate to your website and target people using those words and link them to here. You can't do that on FB. Use the right words on Twitter and you can get a thousand+ instant hits.

"Twitter is VASTLY superior when it comes to direct marketing and advertising either from the corporate giants through to your average punter who has a website to advertise or a product to sell."

You're confusing market research with advertising. On Twitter you can only advertise to people who choose to follow you, it's only permission marketing - closer in type to Tupperware parties than billboards to continue with Mark's theme.

Yes, it's easier to search for what people are saying about your product, but I don't think that says anything at all about the effect that will have on the people who are tweeting (except maybe in terms of how they use that ability to speak to marketers).

It is shortsighted to dismiss Twitter - it has remarkable uses. In marketing terms , the targeted and immediate nature of the tweets around particular issues and the ability to set up your site to target your "prey" have huge potential- which is already being expoloited by early adopters.

Today I am participating (virtually) in the #publicsphere conference in Wollongong using a live stream, a blog and input from Twitter - the only think I am missing out on is the table discussions.

I agree with the analysis but from a more general position. The so-called digital media space is not a single media technology, unlike say the telephone or radio. TV and cinema are platforms that marry multiple mediums yet have definite limitations in terms of distribution and access. The twin developments of digitisation of data and ubiquitous global distribution represent an expansion of several orders of magnitude in the world's media capacity which is also almost completely unfettered by regulations or laws.

Facebook and twitter have be seen as mere infants not just on the basis of chronology but also in terms of utilisation of the potential inherit in the new media. From that perspective, claims that Twitter or something else will take over our lives seem extravagant despite how appealing it is right now. All of this I suppose, reinforces the idea that basic digital literacy must be pursued universally and the analogy that we are mere scratching the surface of a big new space.

just my 2c :)

"On Twitter you can only advertise to people who choose to follow you"

I get messages from people I'm not following all the time. Not hard to use suggestive advertising as opposed to direct.

eg ~

Me: "I need a new LCD TV"

Reply: "Hey, I got a great deal on a tele at *where ever*. Check it out [url]"

Chances are I'm going to have a look. The only way to block that sort of thing is to make your tweets private.

Facebook did not kill blogging, blogging did that all by itself. Too many bloggers, too much trivia, too many irrelevant opinions on rubbish. Twitter and Facebook are doomed, teenagers have aleady moved on to places like Bebo. Even elders have moved to Finerday. People will always have their favourite sites and continue to use them until something 'better!?" comes along.