Phase to Ground

I was on a plane the other day, sitting next to Rick, a very nice father of 3.  We were talking about social networking tools and he asked about the difference between Facebook’s status updates and Twitter. I stumbled through an answer but got to thinking more about what actually IS the difference?

I recently signed up for Twitter to see what all the fuss is about over there, especially with Facebook having the status updates option. I use Facebook’s status updates to update my status maybe once every few days for big things, but I think Twitter is a better tool for random updates throughout the day. Obviously Facebook has – almost – perfected Social Networking, but here’s why I think I’ll use both, for now at least.

1. Status updates without having to be friends. My friends on Facebook don’t really care about my thoughts on daylight savings time, just like the people following me on Twitter don’t care that I was tailgating down at USC last weekend. I’d like to keep my Facebook friends list just for the people that I might hang out with, or people that I talk to on a regular basis.

2. Public Posting. Twitter allows anyone to go to your twitter page and see what you’re up to (twitter.com/DrLaw) without having to pretend to be your friend on Facebook just to see your updates.  I can also link the twitter updates to this site, something you can’t do with Facebook.

3. My friends don’t care about my random thoughts. By keeping the status updates separate from the tweets (yes, that’s what they’re called if you didn’t know), things stay more organized that way.

TL;DR Version: Facebook for status updates, Twitter for thoughts and musings throughout the day.