Twitter & Facebook Updates
I’ve been using a nice little app in Facebook that allows my Twitter posts (Tweets) to become my current Facebook status update. Just a few days ago Facebook announced to their developer community the ability to make mobile updates from Facebook.
Is this the end of Twitter? Hardly.
People have asked me if they should be on Facebook OR Twitter. My answer is: “Probably both.”
Twitter is a clean, simple and uncomplicated way to share information with a very specific group of people or a large group of people, depending on how you use the tool. Facebook is actually much more robust for sharing a large amount of information and creating a singular space to keep lots of information updated.
Twitter also lets anyone with a cell phone simply text “Follow username” to 40404 and, voila, they’re following that person’s Tweets – even if they themselves are not subscribed to Twitter. This is basic SMS messaging (texting) and is the simplest way for people to engage those on Twitter.
Yet the signup process and simplicity of Twitter means that simply staying up-to-date is easier on Twitter and – probably the biggest key point – far easier to manage followers/users than Facebook. Why? Third-party apps and, if need be, the Twitter browser interface.
Grouping people with tools like TweetDeck or managing multiple accounts with tools like Twhirl make it far easier to manage your Twitter tool than Facebook.
At the end of the day, Facebook is a wonderful tool that I recommend (and use myself). This is simply a case of “right tool for the right job”.
Posted on February 9th, 2009, by Anthony Coppedge