Tweet nothings

In 140 characters, Twitter redefining the world.

Twitter

is the new

Facebook

, even as

Facebook

struggles not to be tagged as 'the new

Orkut

'. In a bid to catch up with

Twitter

's fast-growing user base,

Facebook

has now introduced

Twitter'

s 'Retweet' feature on its website, called 'Share', through which, interesting status updates can be shared with friends. This application comes only months after LiveFeed and status-tagging, both of which suspiciously resemble

Twitter

features.

It's obvious that

Facebook

is making a desperate effort to hold on to its users, but is

Twitter

the way of the future?

Twitter

user, Richa Gupta, a computer engineer from Mumbai, certainly feels so. "After random people started adding me on Facebook asking for my age/sex/location, I decided to move to

Twitter

.

Facebook

, right now, is now a place to share pictures and interact with family and friends."

Ironically, the reason why a lot of people shifted from

Orkut

to

Facebook

- to protect their privacy - contradicts the reason they are on

Twitter

- to interact.

Says Dharmesh Gandhi, a producer at

CNBC TV 18

, "The great thing about

Twitter

is that you get real time updates of writers, critics, people who are jobless -

Twitter

is great for conversations."

Of course, controversies have helped in

Twitter's

popularity. Shashi Tharoor, whose 'cattle class' remark on

Twitter

saw his following count increase from a few thousands to 622,634 followers at last count, is a networking phenomenon now. "Facebook never got as much media attention as Twitter did," opines stylist Shruti W. "Gossip columns referring to tweets about celebrities has caught the fancy of the masses."

Saad Akhtar, owner of

flyyoufools.com

, whose follower count saw a hike when Chetan Bhagat 'blocked' him on Twitter, gives his thoughts, "My comics have been retweeted more than a 100 times on Twitter. Facebook couldn't help. Controversy or not, Twitter is the best networking tool today."