Quick edit | Twitter or Facebook?

There have been several ways to classify people: communists and capitalists, believers and atheists, coffee drinkers and tea drinkers—and now Facebook users and Twitter users.

The former form the larger community, but the latter are growing in numbers. Online measurement firm comScore said on Wednesday that microblogging site Twitter got more than 50 million unique visitors in July, making it one of the 50 most visited Internet sites. Twitter’s tipping point seems to have been the post-election protests in Iran, when it became a rallying point and the main source of information; traffic shot up from 9.8 million to 19.1 million in March.

Twitter is pure information in small bites of up to 140 words. It is a personalized news service more than a toy. Facebook is self-indulgent, telling people what you just ate or the state of your dog’s health. Twitter’s popularity is not due to attention deficit disorder, but rather due to information excess syndrome. Its brevity is a reprieve.

So, what’s your poison: Twitter or Facebook?