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‘Society is held together by communication and information.’ So said Samuel Johnson back in the 18th Century.

Here in the 21st Century Johnson’s words are even more apt. New online social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are merging information and communication through simple and easy-to-use interfaces.

Communication: Through Twitter and Facebook you can converse with other users quickly and easily through walls, news feeds, @replies and direct messages. Users have embraced the ‘less is more’ ethos and found that brevity aids communication. Recent research suggests that tools like Twitter and Facebook are now more popular than email as a means of communication.

Information: Social media provides users with instantaneous information about what’s going on in the world, indeed quicker than through any other medium. No wonder many people who previously used news websites, RSS feed readers and other content aggregators to track information online are now often using just Twitter instead. This has been given even more traction through the emerging power of real-time search.

But how are we to cope with the massive increase in information and communication? Back in May 2008 ReadWriteWeb complained of too many choices and too much content – a year later and the situation’s worse than ever.

The past few months have seen Twitter’s traffic take-off but already we’re seeing complaints of Twitter fatigue.

We are experiencing the white heat of change in communication and information, and it’s not just technology but society itself that is changing. Just as Samuel Johnson would have predicted back in the 1770s.

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We’re not yet a quarter of the way into 2009 but already it’s clear that, if 2008 was Facebook‘s year, 2009 is Twitter‘s.

In January 2009 Twitter saw a 10-fold traffic increase in the UK over the previous year, and this was before Jonathan Ross announced it on his Friday night show and Phillip Schofield talked about it on GMTV.

In the US the social media phenomenon has just hit the mainstream, as Jon Stewart’s piece on the Daily Show demonstrates (see video below) and the same is happening here in the UK.

Given that Twitter users are also Facebook users, could this be the start of a move away from Facebook?

Facebook still has a vast lead in terms of unique users and continues to grow rapidly. But look back to over a year ago and the same was being said of MySpace, the previous leader.

It’s clear that, despite high engagement, loyalty is fragile in the social networking space.

Nevertheless, I don’t think Twitter will disrupt Facebook’s position, as they both fulfil different social functions.

Facebook is about personal identity, a place where friends can share photographs and videos and keep in touch with each other’s lives.

Twitter is more of a micro-blogging tool and virtual water cooler.

Not that Facebook isn’t responding dramatically. Despite last year’s failed takeover of Twitter, Facebook is continuing to pursue aggressive growth, and the new real-time format that it’s launching right now has more than a whiff of Twitter-style functionality about it.

Finally it’s worth noting that the continual adoption of new social tools can’t go on indefinitely. I currently manage a range of online social tools for various aspects of my life, and while they all have their uses it’s getting close to the limit for me. It’s getting to the point where I’d have to ditch one to adopt another.

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