Why Twitter is more valuable than Facebook

An interesting story in the New York Times today on the value of twitter: 

“Twitter lets people know what’s going on about things they care about instantly, as it happens,” said Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive and co-founder. “In the best cases, Twitter makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.”

Mr. Williams, along with the other founders, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, first envisioned Twitter as an easy way to stay in touch with people you already know.

In 2006, when Twitter was just starting, the three men felt a small earthquake in San Francisco. They each reached for their phones to twitter about it and discovered tweets from others in the city. At that moment, it dawned on them that Twitter might be most useful for something else — a frontline news report, not just for friends, but for anyone reading.

Indeed, the news-gathering promise of Twitter was most evident during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November and when a jetliner landed in the Hudson River in January. People were twittering from the scenes before reporters arrived.