16 11 / 2010
Are you fucking kidding me?!? Nothing irritates me more than the notion of women having the ability to make a man “feel like a man”. I tell you one thing, I would NEVER need a man to make me “feel like a woman”. What the fuck does that even mean? Do men inherently have gender identity disorders that only women can help them with?
Why on earth would it be a woman’s responsibility to reinforce a man’s overinflated ego in order to make him feel more masculine? That’s the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever read.
So, supporting your man = reinforcing their ego and making them feel like a man? Ugh.
17 8 / 2009
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I use Twitter because:
1) It helps me feel connected to the web in small doses. Scanning headlines, picking the best bits out of the news based on the people I trust finding it and spreading the word.
2) I enjoy the humanization of people. Everybody from industry thought leaders to celebrities, to close friends. I enjoy seeing the multiple dimensions people have that I wasn’t a part of before Twitter.
3) I enjoy being connected to multiple communities. Being a web girl who plays a lot of MMORPGs and virtual worlds, manages a community for a living, rides horses, supports equal rights, has a passion for homes and design, loves food…etc. etc. - Twitter has helped be a part of all those communities at once. Easily.
4) Twitter has actually IMPROVED my social life (imagine that). Because of following a local bar, I know the latest beers on tap. I stay on top of the awesome indie bands playing at the club down the street. I know when the wine bar around the corner is doing half off tastings. I know when there is an art festival. I know where my friends are, and I can send out a simple “Hey, I’m hanging out at X if anyone wants to join me.”
5) The people. I’ve made friends, improved friendships with others, networked with people in my industry, had conversations with people I never would have dreamed of.
6) When it’s my birthday, 200+ people wish me a happy birthday. It’s freaking rad. ;)
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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.
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
