The other day I wrote about wanting to be allowed to shoot anyone who tries to propagate the ol’ Service A kills Service B silliness. It’s a good thing then that I like Mark Dykesman because for some reason a normally smart man has fallen into this trap.

In a post yesterday Mark posits that Twitter will die before Facebook and yes on the surface he makes some interesting points

Twitter is a limited platform that is unlikely to evolve.  Gen Y and younger (not to mention members of Gen X and older) can do Twitter in their sleep.  But, it probably doesn’t do everything they want to do.  They aren’t into just reading text.  Yes, you can send links via Twitter, but each extra click you add is a barrier to it being used.

Facebook can basically do everything that Twitter can do, plus a whole lot more.  To some people, Facebook is the Web because it’s a portal to other things.  You can share photos on it.  You can write your notes.  You can share links.  You can keep track of your friends.  You can spend hours on it playing Flash games.  And so on.

Twitter?  You can send text messages.  But only short ones.  With links.  But unless you have an extra app loaded, you really don’t know what the links are until you click on them.

Facebook could eventually die as well.  It probably will die someday.  It has its own limits and it may yet be replaced by a better (read:  open) platform.

But which will die first?  Twitter, no question in my mind.  It may take 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or longer, but Twitter will eventually die because simple tools only last until something equally simpler, cheaper, easier to use and more powerful comes along.  We’ve seen it over and over again with different kinds of technology.  The same thing will likely happen to Facebook.  But I think Twitter will die first.

Interesting points and ya as I said – on the surface they appear to be quite valid. Except there is one big glaring problem that Mark, and others who feel the same are missing.

Comparing Twitter and Facebook is exactly like trying to compare apples to oranges.

Regardless of the fact that Facebook has tried to mimic what Twitter does it cannot, and will not be able to match it. They are two totally different beasts and occupy two totally different ecospheres within the larger web. It is precisely because of the simplicity of Twitter that it is slowly becoming a part of the plumbing that is the web. Facebook is the high-rise apartment building sitting on top of the web.

There have been contenders for the Twitter crown before and both Pwnce and Jaiku had a richer user option interface. Where are they now? Gone.

There are current attempts to copy the success of Twitter and yet Indenti.ca and Plurk are still nothing more than plumbing wannabes.

So as much as we all might like to get the gossip train going the fact is that Twitter isn’t going anywhere soon and neither is Facebook – they serve two totally different needs.