January 2nd, 2010
Twitter Vs. Facebook
I don’t understand Twitter. Against my better judgment, the husband convinced me to try Twitter, and I’ve been at it for a couple of weeks. He told me it was like Facebook – if you like Facebook, you’ll love Twitter. He said it was an excellent place to broadcast the random ‘news’ articles I find, or the blogs I like or just post random statements about myself without the self-conscientiousness that I occasionally feel on Facebook. No offense intended Facebook – it’s just that with Facebook, I understand that even if I’m bored or in an insomniatic fit and I feel like posting a new update every five minutes – I shouldn’t. I’ll look crazy and I’ll drive my friends crazy.
Plus, I pretty much know most of my Facebook peeps – a lot of us grew up in the same small town together, some of us worked together in theatre, some of us teach together, some of us know mutual people and appreciate the same interests i.e. writing, reading, Swedish horror movies….. It’s like a really big, slightly disjointed family. We stay on our best behavior and generally appreciate each other’s quirks.
Not Twitter. Twitter is crazy land to me.
The best analogy I can come up with is that Facebook is like Wine With Friends Night – and Twitter is Drunken Binge on Tequila Night With Co-Workers.
You’ve all been there, or maybe you’ve just had to hear about it, or clean up after your roommate….either way – you know what I’m saying.
Wine With Friends Night means that we all get together, have a few too many glasses of something expensive and start talking about whether the Japanese ‘Ringo’ can even be compared to the ‘The Ring’ and why ‘No Country For Old Men’ made a better movie than book whereas ‘The Road’ made a better book than movie, and the merits of Cormac McCarthy.
Every once in awhile, as the night progresses, someone says something off the wall, then quietly excuses themselves to the bathroom and we all forget about it, they return and we order another bottle of merlot and keep on keepin’ on.
No one pukes in their hair, no one punches the bartender, and no one threatens their mother.
Not on Twitter – I mean Drunken Tequila Night With Co-Workers.
On Drunken Tequila Night, you’re hanging out with a bunch of people that you don’t really know very well. You might know that they bring a lean cuisine frozen pasta meal for lunch everyday that makes the microwave smell like marinara, and you might know that they have a hot boyfriend/girlfriend whose picture they keep on their desk. But you don’t really know them.
On Drunken Tequila Night, everyone is vying for attention. Everyone wants to be special, wants everyone else to see how pretty they are, how popular they are, how clever and witty they are, and most of all how hot they look when they giggle.
On Drunken Tequila Night, conversation eventually dissolves into random fact-bearing nuggets like:
“Hot Chocolate!!!!”
“I like Toast!”
“My right boob is smaller than my left boob!”
and occasionally, the totally inappropriate but psychologically telling outbursts such as:
“My mom is a heartless bitch who should have had an abortion.”
Incidentally, I ‘unfollowed’ that guy….
My point is this – I don’t get Twitter. I currently have eighteen followers and am following ninety-three people. I get flooded with people’s random, tequila induced thoughts every time I log on. I’m trying to figure out why I should care, or why they should care that I watched ‘Let The Right One In’ on Netflix last night.
In differentiating between Twitter and Facebook – there also seems to be a breakdown in the level of responsibility involved.
On Facebook – if someone posted something scary like ‘I just can’t take it anymore’ – I bet their inbox would be flooded with ‘are you okay’s?’ and their phone number that shows up on your profile would be called a few dozen times. Maybe not, but I’m hoping that’s the truth. I’ve done it, not the post but the phone calls and the follow messages demanding that people let me know they’re all right.
But, in Twitter land – if someone tweets that same thing – they’re likely to be ignored, or at best ‘retweeted’ – which basically translates to ‘I read this and while I can’t be bothered to make a comment, I’ll gladly repeat you”
Help me out people. I want to like Twitter, I mean Oprah likes it and she’s never steered me wrong….or has she?
I have a Twitter page somewhere out there. At first I thought…”Wow this is pretty cool.” Then I met Facebook. Twitter has nothing to compare to Facebook. It’s boring and I have like 40 followers who only post Tweets to porn sites and consumer products. (Not a porn advocate) I rarely go on Twitter. I get board of it! I tweet and get maybe a tweet back but never has there been a bunch of Twittering?!.
What really tweets my gears is that you can’t tweet to the people you follow? Why? Are you not as important as the people you twitter follow. I can’t Tweet Oprah but she can Tweet me? Maybe I missed the how to section? But to me….unless your into sending 135 letter sentences into nowhere space….then what is the point of twittering?
Personally speaking…I twitter hardly ever and I tweet now and then….but I rather Facebook and Yahoo then Tweet and Twitter. At least people respond to my Facebook comments. Twitter doesn’t tweet me very much and I don’t like to tweet my twitter for a Tweet here and there!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Havenner and Jen & Mark Haven, Kathleen Kaufman. Kathleen Kaufman said: Twitter Vs. Facebook – http://shar.es/aUsjU [...]
I love Twitter. I’m a writer (three published novels) and I think it’s one of the best things that could happen to writers and bloggers, but it’s definitely an acquired taste. There’s also a kind of culture and skillset to it that isn’t immediately apparent when you first start.
You need to filter, filter, filter. It’s a great place to meet aspiring writers, published writers, readers, book bloggers, agents, editors, but you have to seek them out (the Twitter lists are very helpful for this). Hashtags are important — if you search for #askagent, for example, you’ll access the question-and-answer conversations some of the agents have with people on Twitter (every Friday, I believe) — you can also look for #writing, etc.
A lot of people use Twitter to broadcast dumb stuff, but Twitter shouldn’t be about broadcasting at all. It’s about engaging people — having conversations with them. It’s also about sharing cool links and information and promoting other people as well as yourself. ‘Retweets’ are a crucial part of the Twitter culture — they’re meant as compliments to the people you’re retweeting, they are also a reflection on you (what you like and value) and they also help stuff go viral. If Tim, with 50 followers, tweets something cool, someone like me (2928 followers) will retweet it so more people can see it, and someone from my tweetstream who maybe has 20,000 or 50,000 followers then picks up on it and retweets it…and so on…you see what I mean. I’ve had some of my blog posts get kicked around this way and twitter is a steady source of traffic for my blog. It’s also a great form of feedback — you get a sense of the stuff you blog about that truly resonates with people.
Not to mention — Twitter is microblogging. Another form of writing. It’s fun.
Also — by pulling your Twitter feed into your facebook page you can spark off some interesting realtime conversations that way — a lot of my Facebook page content is made up of people responding to my tweets, and there’s been some great, fun, stimulating interaction that isn’t restricted to the 140-character limit of Twitter. Facebook, Twitter, and my blog form a kind of triangle with each other — they’re richer for each other.
Twitter takes time, but it is so worth it. I really hope you stick with it, and maybe explore some of the third-party Twitter applications that can help you organize the experience, or Google some of the articles and blog posts that talk about how to “do” Twitter.
And best of luck with your writing and your book!
I can see that. With me twitter is for occasional random thoughts that are conversations in themselves. But mostly it’s my networking tool for books, readers, authors and publicists. When I write a review, it’s how I share it. When I’m on page 70 of a book it’s how I bookmark it. It’s great for me because then I find other people who are in a similar place of a book as I, and we can discuss without spoilers of too far or not quite that far etc. Also, it’s just fun… but yes, there are the comments that you avoid… or the ones where you have to decide just how much you want to get invested in that “stranger”.
I read your comment on mental floss about the death photos… as a teacher, that would completely make the grade for those horrible first year stories! Glad you stuck with it. As far as Facebook v. Twitter…. I barely remember (or care) what I ate for dinner last night, much less what you (or anyone else!) ate. In my opinion,blabbing on and on about yourself does not pass for news or conversation.
I love twitter, and I tweet probably way more than I should. I’ve followed you on twitter. I use twitter more than ever nowadays and my blog feels abandoned!
I’m agree with you, i recently came across your blog and have been reading along.. I should just give up and take lessons from you
Follow me on Twitter
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