Twitter Isn’t Facebook
Twitter Isn’t Facebook
They are two completely different platforms and, in my opinion, should be used for two completely different things. Because Facebook has the dual opt-in feature of you requesting someone’s friendship and them having to grant it, the way I choose to use Facebook is very much as a way of keeping in contact with friends, family and acquaintances. If I am someone’s friend on Facebook then there is a good chance that I have met them at least once. I tend not to add random people to Facebook. In this way the things that I want to see on Facebook and the information I want get out of it are very different to that of Twitter. On Facebook I want to see photos of parties I haven’t managed to get to, places people have been and I want to hear about how they are feeling or what they are doing in a personal sense.
On Twitter the experience is completely different. Twitter allows people to follow you without you having to give them approval, assuming that you do not have a protected feed. The less personal aspect of this relationship means that people are less likely to post the depth of information they post to their personal Facebook accounts. As a result Twitter has evolved into a platform for things like sharing links to interesting stories from elsewhere on the web. It can be used to promote personal projects and work but is just as likely used to share the work of others simply because it is felt to be useful or informative to the community at large.
So there are my opinions on why I feel Twitter and Facebook are two very different things. Going back to my initial point, no one’s Twitter experience is going to be the same. I am simply commenting on broader trends I have observed. Going back to the idea of both services being different, I think there is an argument against linking both services together. Even in the corporate setting, somewhere where I feel the crime I am about to pass judgement goes on far more than on the personal side, I think the messages and level of conversation you are able to engage your audience can and maybe should be very different across the two platforms.
A number of the Twitter profiles I follow, mainly in the small theatre company / business sector, have engaged a social media strategy where their Facebook feeds their Twitter feed. I am aware that in my early days on Twitter this was exactly what I was doing, but on reflection it was not the greatest way to get the best out of Twitter. Tools such as Ping.fm allow you to post the same update across multiple social networks. If you have a simplified broadcast strategy this can be quite effective. What I would discourage is posting from your Facebook feed so that it leaves a link in the tweet back to your Facebook status updates. This has really started annoying me recently, particularly where I think I am going to get a link to further content. Clicking on a link in my Twitter feed only to see exactly the same words but on a Facebook profile does not add any value to the conversation. Cross post if such a broadcast strategy is what your organisation is trying to achieve, but avoid duplication, and maybe spend some time working on how your followers on different social networks differ and how you can be better engaging them where they choose to interact with you.
Photo credit: respres on Flickr
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