Twitter - Facebook - Social Media

Using Twitter , Facebook, personal learning networks and time suck. An interesting tweet from @tryed. @glassbeed Interesting. Older students are dropping Facebook for Twitter In response I think to this retweet from @glassbeed RT @biggmaxx OK, this one's great...from one of my students today in class...."Twitter is Facebook for old people" When I was in college, the first time, we young students generally respected the older students. As a rule the older students worked harder and got better grades than most of us younger guys. We knew there was some sort of wisdom gained with age we just couldn't seem to use it. I mean doing homework, reviewing or even rewriting notes, going to sleep at reasonable hours, preparing for the day; we knew these sorts of things would improve our grades, but we just couldn't seem to do them. Here's my view of Twitter and Facebook. After reading I hope you will understand why it is not a wonder to me that older students would choose Twitter over Facebook, at least in general? Facebook is great for connecting to old friends and family.

• The friend search allowing you to focus a search by school and city promotes this. The friend suggestion tool that basically suggests your friends friends also promotes a current or former group of friends.
• With a profile that includes options like relationship status and political views points content towards daily life and opinions.
• The ability to embed pictures and video into the wall stream and allow friends to make comments that all can see again tends to daily social life. Most of our pictures are family and friends.
• Almost all your friends on Facebook actually have some social connection to you.
  

• The various polls, quizzes, and games are a huge time suck, but generally addicting.

It seems obvious to me that Facebook is more geared towards the social aspect of collaboration. Twitter on the other hand is great for connecting to professionals.

• Your Twitter homepage is very basic minimalist design with an emphasis on what you have tweeted lately.
  
• Your group of friends is right there as one big group. Easy for everyone to not only see but follow as well.
  
• Twitter allows people to create their own API client emphasizing what they want. This allows users to choose what they want Twitter to look like. I like Tweetdeck because I can separate the people I follow into groups.
  
• Twitter allows one basic picture of you, words and links.
  
• The limit of 140 characters is both restrictive and requires creativity.
  

Twitter it seems to me is strongly focused on what you have to say. How is this really different?

• On Facebook my friends are people who care about my daily life - they want to see pictures of my kids, they care about my job search, they want to know about the weather in my part of town.
  
• On Twitter my friends are people I don't know, but we have a common interest. In my case mostly education, but also some social media marketing mixed in.
  
• On Facebook I check in once a day or so and see what my friends are up too. Friends whom I don't call often enough.
  
• On Twitter I leave it running in a side monitor and follow discussions in real time over a period of time.
• On Facebook, for me, a lot of the conversation is what is happening or some silly quiz.
  
• On Twitter , for me, most of the conversation is interesting facts or links to interesting articles, with the occasional tweetscussion thrown in.
  
• discussions don't work very well on Twitter , but if they are good I have seen a few move to a elluminate or similar forum.
  
• Facebook for me is about keeping in touch or promoting a cause.
  
• Twitter is about learning and developing professionally.
  
• Facebook is a group of friends - Twitter is a PLN or personal learning network.

Can Facebook and Twitter be used for the same thing?

• Yes, Facebook can and should be used by someone looking to promote a professional service or business.
• Facebook groups can and do create strong professional relationships.
  
• Creating a group to promote your business and the visual aids allowed by Facebook can work very well to introduce and keep enthusiasm for your business.
  
• Yes, Twitter can be used to keep in touch with friends. I've actually seen a lot of pictures of kids and what not. I think it adds a nice human touch to professional relationships.

I just think Twitter works better for building a PLN while Facebook is better at keeping in touch with people.