Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Facebook and or Twitter

Facebook and or Twitter?



I pose the question because to my knowledge I have only one person that I both follow on twitter and am friends with on facebook. Both Facebook and Twitter have something to offer, but the experiences offered are vastly different. Facebook is friends and family and it is supposed to be fun, though that is not always the case. Twitter (at least for me) is more about networking, finding people who in 140 characters (or less) offer great advice or links to sites that I would be interested in. Right now, I follow a lot of people involved in the writing industry; writers, agents, publishers, etc… people that I can learn from and that might be able to help me become a published writer. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both sites.

Facebook

I am starting with Facebook because I joined Facebook first. An old friend of mine mentioned that she was talking to all these people we mutually knew on this site called Facebook. So I go to the site, put in my information, log on and within a week or two I have around a hundred “friends.” It’s so cool, I am talking to this person that I played pee wee football with and this person that I really did not like in high school, in fact I think I despised this person, why I am now friends with them? After a few months it was that very question that leads to my first friend purging. You ask yourself; why exactly am I friends with this person? Oh wait, I can just delete them and they will just go away again? Sweet, how cool is that?

Facebook can become a bit too TMI sometimes, I know I have on occasion put way too much info out there. Facebook can become tiresome at times. I have quit at least three times, for various reasons ranging from jealousy to a family fight. In terms of the jealousy I have learned what one person has in abundance another lacks and I would not trade what I have an abundance of for anything. Facebook has brought me closer to some people, people I may not have gotten a chance to know better without the site. I also have some loyal readers and one very loving aunt that encourages and promotes my writing as often as she can. My current view on Facebook is that it can be both fun and useful, do not take it too seriously and hope friends will be willing to read my post.

Twitter

When I first started Twitter I was so lost, I really just had no idea how to use it or what I was supposed to do. I think after the first time I logged onto the site I did not log on again until at least six months later. It was not until I started taking my own writing seriously that I discovered the benefits of Twitter. For people not accustomed to Twitter, a brief explanation; you follow people you think you will be interested in, some people follow celebrities, others follow writers. Whenever someone you follow tweets it shows up in your time line. People do not generally follow you back. In a way it becomes the goal of twitter to gain followers, not that the person with the most followers wins anything, but in a case like mine, the more followers I have the more potential readers I have.

As stated above I follow many people involved with writing and the one thing I kept hearing was: you have to put your shit out there. That is where this blog sprang from. It has taken some time to warm to it, but I now have a better feel for this blog and how it should sound- the voice you hear in the reading is my voice, pure and simple. Speaking of blogging and Twitter, I would like to say a word about my biggest supporter on Twitter; @ladylikepervert .  She is a fellow blogger and I like to think that we have both helped each other along the way, though she has likely helped me more.  You should definitely check out her site http://ladylikepervert.com/ as the name implies, she is a lady but she is also a pervert, her blogs are humorous, sexual and sometimes painful, but always well written and entertaining.

Both Twitter and Facebook have their pros and cons. Twitter offers valuable information, networking and new friendships, but when you are not established it can sometimes be difficult to be heard. Facebook gives you a chance to reconnect with people, sometimes for good, sometimes… not so much. At one point I made a rule for Facebook; if I saw this person at the grocery store would I go out of my way to talk to them or avoid them? If I would talk to them they stayed otherwise, delete. Now I accept all friend requests and don’t delete; honestly I am hardly ever on because if I am not writing I am probably tweeting.

6 comments:

  1. You are a darling. Thank YOU for being such an awesome support and you know that I adore you just as much! I love your writing.

    Great points about the social medias... fabulous job as always!
    xo

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  2. Thank you! That's what friends are for, right?

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  3. I love them both! Facebook is good for people I already know a bit deeper, have friends in common or have history with. Twitter is a little more "surface" I guess, short, to the point, interactions with people I don't know except from Twitter. Both have their advantages and are useful for some of the same but also different things.

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  4. This really is a nice introduction to someone who's rather new to one or both of these. I only joined twitter last March, and probably have been on Facebook only two or three years max. I have been blogging for more than 6 years, before starting adaddyblog.com more recently. So really pretty new to social media like FB and Twiter compared to many. Before I'd been on Twitter a bit, I must say I just didn't "get" it. But now I'm on there much more than on Facebook. Facebook is largely for friends and family (at least 8 or 10 in Buffalo, btw), though my blog does have a "Facebook fan page" and I do recommend that, as Facebook is checked almost everyday by most users, versus every four days for Twitter (on average, of course). My Facebook page is http://on.fb.me/adaddyblog, btw. I love Twitter because I can ask a question and get a dozen helpful responses in minutes. I do have more than 2000 followers, but that's something that takes time. You must be interactive and add value to your followers (I prefer to think of them as friends I haven't met in person yet). Anyway, great blog!

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  5. p.s. I should add that I got a tweet from Neil Gaiman the other day (@neilhimself) and it made my day. He's an author I've enjoyed for some time, and has something like 1.5 million twitter followers. I must however add that he was, in his ever so polite British way (he's not live in the US long enough to have lost that), correcting me via his tweet on a error I'd made. But first he thanked me. I know... I'm a big geek, but it was kinda cool just the same.

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  6. Believe me I was thrilled when I hit 100 followers. I also follow @neilhimself and would be equally as excited to get an @ from him whether he was correcting me or not, it would still be pretty cool!

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