Catharine P. Taylor brought up a great question in her blog post in the Social Media Insider. Her question is one that we’ve talked about here on a number of occasions. The question is what kind of communication and with whom is appropriate in each form of Social Media? She points out that Twitter and Facebook have very different environments and she’s beginning to see that you communicate differently in each. Here are her observations…
- “I guess that MG Siegler’s column yesterday on TechCrunch, asking whether Facebook should adopt a friend and a follower system, resonated with me because I’ve been thinking about the nature of my social networking relationships lately as well. I finally got around to decoupling my tweets from my status updates earlier this month — 15 seconds that I should have found in my schedule at least a year ago.
- “The problem was that I was concerned my worlds were intermingling too much — more than I, or those in my Twitter and Facebook circles, wanted them to. I do a fair amount of outreach on Twitter for the various projects that constitute my living. My friends on Facebook, though originally made up largely of professional friends — because soccer Moms and college friends hadn’t yet discovered it — had turned more into a place where they ruled the day. And, though no offense is meant to my “professional” Facebook friends, having discussions about why the kids have yet another half day off from school seems much more in context on Facebook to me than ones debating the virtues of the iPhone 4.
- “So, as Twitter and Facebook began to evolve, I began to grow uncomfortable with the spillover between the two. Did the professional crowd get tired of my 140-character laments about my almost daily trips to CVS? Did friends and family wonder why I would express any interest in recruiting them for a panel at the Social Media Insider Summit (plug!) or share a story about market share of the Android platform? Fortunately, everyone was too polite to write obnoxious stuff about my confused life on my wall, but still … it was high time that I tried to bring method to my social networking madness.”
That’s what each of us has to understand. There’s a different feel to the communication depending on where you are communicating. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—they are each a different platform with a distinct atmosphere. On Facebook, you control (or at least you have more control) over who reads your posts, in Twitter everybody can read your posts.
Click here for her entire post.
Tags: Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter
