Is Twitter (TWTR) Better Than Facebook (FB) In Filtering?

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), two of the world’s largest social media companies, give different experiences to users in terms of political content exposure, a report from the Pew Research Center reveals.

According to the organization’s Jeffrey Gottfried, the difference is not only because of the larger user base of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) compared to Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR). He said that based on a study by Pew, people are more exposed to political content on Facebook whether they are interested in politics or not.

Gottfried points out that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has a user base of 77% of web-using adults, much larger than the 22% for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR). Furthermore, 86% of Facebook users and 77% of Twitter users reported seeing political content on their feeds.

The difference, however, is that Facebook seems to be displaying political content more across its user base whether these people like political topics or not.

The research organization’s data reveals that 24% of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) users and 19% of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) users point out that at least half of the content on their feeds are political in nature.

Among Twitter users who are very interested in politics, 41% say that at least half of the posts that go through their feeds are political in nature. Compare this to what Gottfried said as 26% of Facebook users interested in politics reporting the same phenomenon.

Meanwhile, more Twitter users who are not interested in politics, 34% to be exact, say they do not encounter political posts. This is higher than 18% of Facebook users who are not interested in politics saying they do not see political content on their news feed.

As Gottfried points out, this difference may have something to do with how Facebook’s newsfeed algorithms decide what content will be displayed. What is apparent from the data, however, is that Twitter seems to be giving the content that their users want, and consequently filtering those they don’t want, better than Facebook.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) shareholders includes Karthik Sarma’s Srs Investment Management which reported owning 5 million shares of the company by the end of the second quarter. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shareholders includes John Thaler’s Jat Capital Management which reported owning about 7.33 million shares of the company by the same period.