12 3 / 2009
Facebook vs. Twitter
So Facebook has rolled out their new home page, in an attempt to make socialization more asynchronous and Twitter-like. Admittedly, I don’t have the new home page yet. (Aside: why is it that the ones who really want it, get it last?) Moving on, the whole internet is abuzz with things like:
- “Facebook is trying to be like Twitter, this home page looks just like it”
- “Facebook will absolutely smash Twitter within a year because they’re doing what Twitter is doing but have the ability to do it better.”
I’m not going to dispute the first point, but the second one is completely false for me. Let’s take a look at my Twitter experience vs. my Facebook experience.
Twitter for me is a place for networking, asking questions, meeting new people, staying on top of the news/buzz, and marketing my company’s brand. I follow almost 500 people, and almost 500 people follow me. I know less than 20 of them in real life, the rest are industry colleagues, musicians, marketing/social media gurus, tech geeks, bloggers, and gamers.
Facebook is completely different. It’s all my real life friends. I have probably 200 friends on Facebook and I’ve met 99% of them through school, work, or family. I use it to check and see what my friends are up to. Not nearly as obsessively as Twitter, but a damn lot. I wouldn’t say I’m a casual FB user, I check it 5-8 times a day on average. But it’s a completely difference experience for me.
I don’t *want* the two to merge. Facebook is my real life. It’s where I post pictures, videos, more personal status messages. It’s not where I go for news (unless you count stalking high school friends as news) and it’s definitely not where I meet someone. If someone adds me as a friend and I don’t know who they are, I ignore the request. I have never used it to meet other people. I don’t even care for the group feature that much because I just join them and ignore them. It’s a much different and much more asynch experience for and I like it that way.
Now and then, a Twitter follower or two will sneak across the border and friend me on Facebook. I’m generally fine with it if they’ve been someone I’ve been engaging in conversations with over time. I’m generally careful about adding my beta testers, and really have to know the person. I have a much more entreprenurial feeling towards Twitter.
Will Facebook take over Twitter in the ‘what are you doing?’ sense? I really hope not. I hope it makes FB users more comfortable with twitter-like communication and makes more people jump ship over to Twitter for continual conversation. Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more people sneak over - and the new blood is nice. It’s good to see more than early adopters jumping onto the tweet-obsession.
- @cuppy
