December 3
Twitter is *way* better than Facebook
Kate is writing a neat series of posts about the joys of twitter, but there’s one thing she said that I have to comment on:
Twitters and Facebook status updates are almost the same thing.
I disagree .. Twitter updates are way better. Here’s why:
- In my experience, people feel compelled to write slightly more interesting stuff in twitter. I attribute this to the slight but important difference in phrasing:
- Twitter: “What are you doing?”
- Facebook: “Alan is … ” (yeah, they’re changing that, but the mold is already set - too late for that)
- You can choose who to follow on twitter. You know that person you can just barely remember from 2 jobs ago who updates his facebook status with inane garbage all day long? On facebook, the ‘friend’ relationship is reciprocal and your only option is to unfriend that person. On twitter you choose who to follow. Aaaaah. Relief.
Possibly the other reason for slightly better twitter content is that the system evolved sending actual messages to people’s phones, so a bit more context was required in those 140 chars updates. In any case, like Kate, I get my twitter updates almost constantly but will go for days without bothering to slog through facebook status messages.
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