On Twitter vs. Facebook status updates
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianInteresting essay on twitter vs. facebook status updates
Basically, it's about how the ways that Facebook and Twitter are set up that create different social norms. On FB, friending is a reciprocal practice, whereas on Twitter it isn't, and on Twitter, you can't reply on someone else's "page," while you can direct a message at them from your own. Twitter, she theorizes, is more about "micro-celebrity" and speaking in public. Therefore, people looking for various things will gravitate to one service or another to do something which seems superficially similar.
Something she doesn't mention though, is that on Twitter if you don't like the fact that someone is following you, you can boot them. This may alter things a bit.
I suppose LJ is more like Twitter than Facebook, but judging from how many people come into suggestions asking for the ability to boot unwanted friends-of, and the whole serial adder thing, a lot of people would like it to be more like Facebook in that respect. I would say that in some ways Dreamwidth goes even further in this direction by separating out the subscribing and access functions, and getting rid of the word "friend." (Tumblr and Posterous are also more Twitter-like in their social graphs.) I wonder if there isn't an unrealized niche out there for a more FB-like blogging service? Private blogging? Or maybe one day FB will come out with a blogging feature which doesn't suck.
Basically, it's about how the ways that Facebook and Twitter are set up that create different social norms. On FB, friending is a reciprocal practice, whereas on Twitter it isn't, and on Twitter, you can't reply on someone else's "page," while you can direct a message at them from your own. Twitter, she theorizes, is more about "micro-celebrity" and speaking in public. Therefore, people looking for various things will gravitate to one service or another to do something which seems superficially similar.
Something she doesn't mention though, is that on Twitter if you don't like the fact that someone is following you, you can boot them. This may alter things a bit.
I suppose LJ is more like Twitter than Facebook, but judging from how many people come into suggestions asking for the ability to boot unwanted friends-of, and the whole serial adder thing, a lot of people would like it to be more like Facebook in that respect. I would say that in some ways Dreamwidth goes even further in this direction by separating out the subscribing and access functions, and getting rid of the word "friend." (Tumblr and Posterous are also more Twitter-like in their social graphs.) I wonder if there isn't an unrealized niche out there for a more FB-like blogging service? Private blogging? Or maybe one day FB will come out with a blogging feature which doesn't suck.
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Date: 2009-11-05 07:22 am (UTC)(I admit, I do block spammers on Twitter. Mostly I just don't want to have them showing up on *my* profile since that is, after all, my space and I expect to control it fairly well. Wouldn't really care if they could link to me, though.)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 07:35 am (UTC)