The recent web faceoff series by Mashable pits Twitter vs. Facebook in a poll, “Where do you get more of your news: Twitter or newspapers?”

While posing this question is a great way to gauge social media and its growing importance in our daily lives, I don’t think the comparison of platforms is a fair fight.

Twitter is a medium to share information. And while you could argue that newspapers attempt to do the same, the architecture of each platform is different. Twitter, a micro-blogging platform, is a means to get to the information. It’s the route to your final destination.  You can’t use Twitter to compile a story or write an editorial. Twitter, and social media and general, is used to share information which is mostly contained elsewhere (i.e. newspapers, TV news websites, and blogs).

There is no doubt that newspapers should be harnessing the power of Twitter to drive traffic and market their product. Maybe the better poll to judge where you get your news is to put newspapers in the ring with blogs in a battle of the big guy vs. the little guy.