How Twitter Got Me Using Facebook
Post written by Ryan Ferrier. Follow me on Twitter.
Confession: My company does nothing but build Facebook apps and yet, until recently, I didn’t really use Facebook.
I’d go to Facebook when someone tagged a photo of me or sent me a message. Occasionally, I’d proactively use Facebook if I needed to message someone for whom I didn’t have an email contact. I never really saw it as a way to enhance my friendships or social life.
There are two reasons for this:
- Though I am a very social person, I very seldom directly initiate social interactions with people who are not physically in front of me. I’m growing out of this a bit, but for some reason I’ve always felt more comfortable responding. (Psychobable: it probably has something to do with me needing to know that I’m desired/welcome before reaching out to others.)
- I love attention, but I feel weird living out my social life in front of others on the web. For this reason, it used to be that if someone wrote on my wall, I’d respond by sending a message directly to their inbox- instead of responding on my wall or writing on theirs.
While I am uncomfortable explicitly initiating social interactions (especially publicly), I am very comfortable sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly (hence this blog). When I am talking about ideas (not dinner plans) and when I am talking to everybody in general (nobody in particular), I love to do it in public.
That dynamic combined with my love of sound-bites made Twitter very appealing to me. I can micro-blog my ideas into the ether and occasionally have people respond to them.
An Unexpected Realization
Recently, a friend who was moving out of the country complained that I never update my Facebook status. To pacify him, I added the Twitter App to my Facebook account, so that any time I sent out a tweet on Twitter my Facebook status would be updated with that same message.
An unexpected thing quickly happened: friends began responding to these new Facebook status updates by commenting on my wall. On Twitter, my messages would get the occasional @ reply or retweet, but not nearly with the frequency that my status updates were (and are) getting commented on.
Twitter is great to use as a micro-blog, but by design, there’s not a comments feature- a native feature for most traditional blogs. Facebook status updates, on the other hand, do support comments.
Realization: By linking my Twitter and Facebook accounts, I had unknowingly enabled a comments feature on my micro-blog.
Twitter updates to Facebook status For The Win!
*Image: A Facebook status update with comments from my wall
For me, this has been a blessed union. My thoughts get frequent feedback, which I love. As well, I feel comfortable responding to these comments publicly by writing on my wall. It’s very much like managing comments and a community on a traditional blog. I’m even beginning to get comfortable proactively commenting on other people’s updates as I know that it’s been encouraging for me.
Moreover, I have found that managing these comments has some nice fringe benefits for my social life. The screenshot above is a good example.
Scott is a friend and former colleague who I eat lunch with semi-regularly; Mengistu is a high school classmate who lives in New York; and Maureen is a friend who recently moved from San Francisco back to the east coast.
After reading and responding to these comments my thought process went something like this:
- I haven’t had lunch with Scott in a while, I should reach out to him.
- It’s good to hear from Gus. I’m going to be in New York later this year. I should give him a shout out while I am there.
- Maureen is hilarious. It’s good to hear from her and stay in touch a bit now that she’s moved away.
My comment and the responses were about the state of sports in the Bay Area, but the interaction over this idea served as a reminder for me to reach out socially- a task made easier by the fact that these peeps took an interest in my post.
I’m still not a Facebook power-user, but I have found that posting my Twitter updates on Facebook has enhanced my micro-blogging experience as well as my social life.
How about you? How and why do you use Facebook and/or Twitter?
posted: 09 December 7
under: Technology