16 3 / 2009
Facebook: You will not be Twitter.
Today, Tweetdeck integrated Facebook Statuses into it. This isn’t anything all that revolutionary. Plenty of other services have been allowing you to update your Facebook status from outside Facebook. Plenty of standalone desktop clients have Facebook status support so you can see what your friends are up to. There’s also quite a few apps out there that have integrated Facebook Chat (Digsby, Meebo, etc.).
Tweetdeck simply put the ability to update your status and view your friends status in the most popular Twitter client.
So, I got the latest version and experimented today. I checked both boxes for both Twitter and Facebook and subsequently forgot about it - leaving it on all day. The result? Tons of my Facebook friends messaging me that I’m “spamming” them. Several people removing me from their news feed altogether because I was annoying them. Now granted, I do tweet 25-35 times a day on the weekdays. Nonetheless, I tried to integrate Facebook for exactly one work day and it failed miserably.
Why? Facebook isn’t about frequent updates of status. It’s not about conversation. It’s not about synchronicity. It’s not about networking and meeting new people. It’s about connecting with your existing friends in new and meaningful ways. Facebook friends don’t care about these larger conversations. It’s strange.
Also, replies are out of context. Seeing me @reply someone who isn’t even a Facebook friend has no relevance whatsoever within Facebook. You can’t click on the username to go anywhere. You can’t @reply a Facebook friend. It just doesn’t make sense. The two services work fine when they’re separate.
Will it evolve? Maybe. But Facebook definitely isn’t ready for my level of spam.
