I think it goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are huge. Taking a quick glance at their usage statistics, you’ll see they’ve grown into behemoths in the social space.

As a disclaimer, I’m well aware that Twitter’s advertised user base of 75 million is grossly inflated, being as only 21% of its users are actually active, according to a brand new study by Barracuda Networks. But that’s neither here nor there, and doesn’t change the point of my argument.

When you get a new client and they want to go social, what’s the first thing you think of? Odds are, most of you raised your hand for Facebook. I’ll give it to you that Twitter isn’t for everyone, but let’s focus on Facebook for right now, a name that has basically become everyday diction for us. Do you realize that we all seem to immediately snap to Facebook? As if you’re retarded if you’re not on it.

I’m not saying that it’s not without good reason. It’s a stellar social network. It’s got everything from profiles, to photos and videos, to status updates, to corporate fan pages and groups. And it’s only getting better. The mobile site is brilliantly designed, and has grown to become the most visited mobile social network . So, I’m not here to say shame on you for looking to Facebook, but I do want to challenge you with the question: Why? Is it because all your other clients ended up with a Facebook Fan Page? Do you have a genuine argument as to why it’s the first thing that comes to mind, or is it because that’s just “what we do” nowadays?

Twitter, on the other hand, has reached a status that to me is quite different from Facebook. Because of the nature of the two services, I feel that Twitter took a different path, one towards channelization. Facebook is a social networking site. Twitter is a medium. I could be getting ahead of myself here, but the fashion in which Twitter has grown and is used, has led me to believe that we could be thinking about it all wrong. I don’t think Twitter is a social networking platform anymore; it’s transformed (not transcended) into something instrumental.

I think on some level it’s become as ordinary and unremarkable as the telephone, or email. We talk about not focusing on the tools, and I wholeheartedly agree. But isn’t that argument used to make the point of putting strategy ahead of tactics. What if Twitter really is just a tool. A tool like my iPhone, or my Samsung/TiVo combo. What is Twitter used for? Communication. It’s only a communication, and sometimes entertainment, tool; no different from the telephone or television. And the way we’ve instructed clients to use it, reflects that.

We measure our clients’ customer relationships in Facebook fans. We measure their “address book” in Twitter followers.

Sure it’s because of their mammoth size, but does anyone else realize that we’ve turned these two sites into the “Break Glass In Case of Emergency” social media services. They’ve become ubiquitous with the term Social Media. When you explain your job to your relatives, what do you say? I’d be surprised if neither Facebook nor Twitter came out of your mouth. When did “social media” become synonymous with these two sites/services/tools?

It’s a hackneyed term, and the vast majority of us don’t deserve the title, but why aren’t we called Digital Anthropologist or Ethnographers? Regardless of how many people may hate the usage of that title (and rightfully so), those same people (I’d hope) also understand that at the end of the day our job is about human beings connecting with human beings. Aren’t we all just digital social workers, hopefully making some kind of difference in peoples’ lives through smiles, laughter, or tears?

When did Facebook and Twitter become the masters of the universe, which have come to define our professional existences? And when did we become tools ourselves?

However, I will say that I think there’s just too many people (read marketers) who have clung to it like it is the second coming. Last week, Morgan Stanley’s 15-year old intern, Matthew Robson, wrote a report that shook up the marketing world. Why? Because in it he said that teens just aren’t into Twitter. First off, it wasn’t a real, full-fledged research report in the traditional sense, so, why people acted as though the apocalypse was upon us is beyond me. Even with that aside, however, why is this news? This kid wasn’t the first to look into the massively overhyped impact of Twitter.

You have Robson saying this, but if you go back not so long ago, The Harvard Business Review did a study that showed that more than half of all Twitter users visit the site less than once a month. And even though nearly half of all Twitter activity comes from the various desktop/mobile applications available, I think it’s safe to say we all send at least one tweet out a month using the site. Furthermore, the study found that the median number of lifetime tweets per user was only one.

Taking another step, Participatory Marketing Network conducted a survey on 200 18-24 year olds and found that only 22% of them use Twitter. And iMedia Connection’s Jason Clark published a piece that did a great job of calling Twitter out. He pointed out the 30% retention rate, which translates to 7 out of 10 users who use it once and stop.

Above and beyond all that, what really upsets me is how some people will defend Twitter to the death, as if it is their child. Why is it so outrageous that not everyone is into Twitter? Is it because it proves that the tremendous amount of hype surrounding it is just that: hype?

Social media platforms will come and go. Yes, Twitter is one of the big ones right now, but who’s to say that it’ll still be around in 5 years. We need to remember that it isn’t the tools that are important, it’s the philosophy behind them. And the underlying theme for all of these sites is social interaction. At the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start Twitter and Facebook, respectively, for the sake of starting them. They did it to facilitate what we naturally do as human beings: communicate. And just as human communication evolved from carrier pigeons, to morse code, to telephones, to email, and now to Twitter, it will continue to evolve. They’re all just tools ultimately serving the same purpose: connecting people.