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I think this is where (no offence) you generation of geek differs to mine...as a young guy (early 20's) my generation of "friends" have used Facebook primarily as a tool to keep in touch with people who they care about.
Yes information sharing is a part of it, but it doesn't matter what info you're sharing, because I care about you and what's going on in your life and that's why I follow you.
Facebook has lists to help filter the clutter, I'd prefer to use them rather than disconnecting myself from people who I care about.
Perhaps you use Facebook in a completely different way than I do...I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts.
- If I have not met you in real life, then you are not my friend on Facebook.
- If we have not shared a beer (or equivalent) together, then you are not my friend on Facebook.
- If you send me a friend request, then I don't care who you are, if these criteria don't apply, I hit the "Ignore" button.
I don't know *anybody* who behaves any differently, and if I did, I probably wouldn't be their friend on Facebook.
Is this sort of their way of closing in on the "permission" to add friends? You bring up a very valid and interesting point regarding the comments. Since we cannot control who our friends are friends with, will this now lead to less comments or unfriending people?
Regarding twitter lists - since anyone can follow anyone if you are put onto a list that you do not wish to be on, if you delete them from following you, does that delete you off that list?
Twitter on the other hand looked a bit dry to me until I started using seesmic at full screen with columns and columns of searches and long streaks of updates.
So it turns out that Facebook has started to become usable and significant to me only after I cut my friends to a bare minimum of real friends in real life.
FriendFeed started working for me with a few more contacts, but only after killing most of the noise makers. If you get all the closure of an individual together with the person you have better choose wisely and add one person at a time. Sometimes the person that hosted the best parties is the one that brings in the whole blogosphere on a given area.
Twitter on the other hand works best for me when I watch tweets a hundred at the time or through statistical aggregators like tweetmeme that might warn of a surge on a topic that could be a news in the making.
This could be simply the difference between letters and newspapers if you think of it.
The thing that would finally make Facebook more useful for me is enabling discovery. It's very difficult to find new people or content on Facebook - showing other people's comments on my friends' items seems obvious to me. When are they going to show me items from non-friends that friends comment on? It seems that everyone's concerned about getting less content. I want more content, or at least the option to get more content when I want it. Things that are more limited (and limited by people who are not me) are not more valuable to me.
But Twitter is horrible for engaging a conversation beyond two people and I'll argue that without that engagement, you'll not expand your circle by meating friends or friends. Twitter is truly just a microblog with a weak comment feature; one big RSS feed where each voice is a feed, no real integration between those feeds beside references to each other every once in a while with an @ sign instead of a hyperlink. Now that said, it clearly has strengths: a huge audience is clearly it's the biggest strength but unless you are followed or listed, that audience is not listening. Lists are a welcome addition but I don't follow any yet because one person's signal is another person's noise. They are great sources to know who you should consider to follow though.
That all said, no system is perfect for everyone. FriendFeed is the model that has worked best for me though and I hope that means that either FriendFeed lives or somehow Facebook can figure out how to use the public features of FF without disrupting the personal friend culture that Facebook grew from. Keeping those two cultures separate is essential from both a noise standpoint but also each of their purposes.
Mike Griffiths.
Scoble's right: you do need to hide or unsubscribe from some friends--they're just noise. I'm hoping FB adds the ability to hide specific friends of a friend.
If you haven't tried FB for a while, give it another try. It's not your father's FB.
Your list of quizzes is hilarious, btw.!
do i get to split up my contacts too? when am i going to get lists?
Cheers - Zoe
how their lives are now.
The "Noise" is certainly a problem for me. It is just that so many people have very little to say. But I think I have to put this onto myself. I am probably not following or friending the right people. Nor am I putting in the time to give back.
Funny how the internet works very similar to relationships.
you dont have to read them. There are several news headlines featured when you go to cnn.com. Do you click on each of them and read them? Quit whining already and just learn to adapt seamlessly.