tekHedd – the blog

There’s a guy you know who used to use Twitter. Or maybe it’s a girl. This guy (or girl) would tweet about how nice his morning shower is, how much he hates his work commute, and how clean the bar bathroom stall door is. This guy no longer uses Twitter, because he bought a smart phone and now uses Facebook.

Is this better? It seems like Facebook adds lots of value over Twitter: there’s the option to embed video, a discussion thread for each status update, and a “Like” button. But this advantage is really a dis-advantage, because it encourages the poster to add a video of the bar bathroom door, and it encourages his friends to discuss the bar bathroom door and “Like” the video of the bar bathroom door. The “clean bar bathroom stall door” video and photo album is now a favorite status update and displayed at the top of your Facebook page. Maybe it will even go viral! Augh!

Compare this to twitter. Your friend can, at best, post a tweet “This stall door is commendably clean! http://example.com/dr2345”. It doesn’t automatically expand into a sexy video box. Responses by his insipid friends will go into their separate Twitter feeds, only visible if you subscribe to them too, or deliberately search for related responses.  And there will be fewer insipid responses, because you have to first consider whether you want your response appearing in your own personal twitter flow. Will it be boring? If so, you risk getting un-followed. Oh noes! On Facebook, comments stay with the original updates, so there’s always a chorus of “yeah” and “me too” and “you go girl” responses to your friends’ insipid status updates.

It seems like I use the word “insipid” a lot when discussing social media. I wonder why that is?

And, of course, twitter has the advantage that new tweets appear at the top of the list. This contrasts with Facebook, which sorts new updates according to a wild randomization algorithm with no clear underlying logic. At least, that’s how it works this month. I fully expect Facebook to replace this system with a different irrational system next month.

Twitter is just IRC

So Twitter is great, right? I will admit that with the right friends it can be a pleasant addition to your lifestyle. But that’s all it is; Twitter is a lifestyle service. It is mostly a time waster, and can easily become a pointless flow of stuff you don’t need. My point is that Facebook is the same pointless flow of uselessness; it just has more features. Think about it: more ‘pointless stuff I don’t need’ is not an improvement.

If you’ve ever been in a chat room, you quickly realize that Twitter is exactly like an IRC (1988) chat room where everybody in the room is ignored by default. Complete with chat bots and everything. The only thing different is that you can’t run your own twitter site, the client software sucks, and the server is unreliable. Oh, and with IRC you can have multiple channels.

As an added bonus, nobody expects you to take Twitter seriously. Anyone who gets angry when un-followed needs to reevaluate priorities.

Facebook is the worst web forum ever

If Twitter is a feature-poor chat room, Facebook is a nearly featureless web forum.

Facebook started out as a sort of MySpace wannabe, but over time it has restructured itself to be a giant web forum (1994). It’s not a good web forum, though. It is a forum where there is only one giant topic section. All of the different topics are jumbled together. And, the forum rules are undefined, making it easy to get into a flame war. Whatever its original goals, Facebook’s feed has become just the “Active Topics” page of a forum with no particular focus or organization.

But, Facebook still has a lot in common with MySpace. Its web site is ugly and using the word “unintuitive” to describe its operation would be an “understatement.” The best thing about Facebook is now band web sites. So, just like MySpace, then.

But the two worst things about Facebook are even worse in combination:

1. real names
2. your mom uses it.

Combine these two, and honestly, the party really is over. It’s not just that Facebook is the mainstream, last-decade, favorite hangout of people who still use AOL, your mom has friended you on Facebook. Say it out loud a few times. Oh yeah, that’s real cool. And it’s not just you. “Real Name” has introduced your mother to your circle of friends, and your mother sees which videos you Like, and what yahoo articles you read. It’s not just mom, it’s your entire family–so even if she doesn’t check the status updates, she still hears the gossip. With the magic of Real Names, Facebook makes sure that you never do or say anything you wouldn’t do with your entire family watching. Woo hoo! Here’s another picture of the kids! Look at the funny thing our cat did today! Please kill me!

And that’s enough

My flirtation with Facebook started as a sort of personal joke. Facebook matured a bit, became “relevant,” and then mainstream. I was starting to kind of like it, but then I got a bunch of “Friends.” Now I only go there to check for personal messages from the sort of people who are determined to use anything but email. (You know, the kind of people who will text you and send facebook messages and PMs but never check email.)

And so, back to Twitter. Those who know me will be thinking “but you hate twitter!” Well, maybe I do, sort of. But I hate it less than Facebook, because it does less. Less is better. The text-only 140 character limit forces people to be concise in their insipid babbling.

No really, you do like twitter

My short guide to making Twitter something you enjoy:

1. If you have something to say that won’t fit into 140 characters, start a blog.
2. If you think you hate twitter, unfollow some people!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.