I know that I am not the only one who misses the old facebook—the facebook when you had to have a college e-mail or be invited into facebook—the facebook where you had to say how you knew your friends. But as facebook grew more popular, it was opened to more people and now it is one of the largest online social networking sites. Personally, I am soooo over facebook. I feel that it invades my personal space too much. I feel bad when I deny my parent’s friend requests, I have a lot less control over when I want to talk to people and who I want to talk to.
Last year I had to make a twitter account for one of my classes, and even though I was unhappy with the new facebook I was still reluctant to start up an account on twitter. To my surprise, I fell in love. I love the real time updates and twitter search. Now, I may only get on facebook every other week just to look up information but I get on twitter at least once a day.
The War
It seems to me that people who are true facebook fans are very resistant to joining new social networks. I can understand their reluctance because joining a new social network means adapting to the network’s rules. Sometimes this can be very confusing and you can find yourself violating the rules not even knowing it. (I still don’t know if it’s okay to tweet celebrities.) What I don’t really understand is why some people straight up refuse to join any other network outside of facebook. I have a friend who is in the communications field as well and she is very adamant about not joining twitter. I decided to ask her a few questions to see if maybe she could help me get a better grasp on the feelings that she and so many others share toward twitter. Here’s my mini interview:
Q: So how long have you been a part of facebook, and what prompted you to join?
A: Since Senior year of high school. I did it thinking that it was the same as the college facebook, but it turns out there was a college facebook and a high school facebook. I just wanted to be able to keep in touch with my college friends.
Q: Do you like the new facebook and all of the changes its gone through over the years?
A: No, I don’t like new facebook. But I do like all the new security features and privacy settings so people don’t have to see everything that I put on facebook. I can cater my page according to who is looking at my profile. I don’t like all the random applications though because I think they’re pointless. You get too many unwanted invitations from random people you haven’t talked to in years
Q: What other forms of social media are you familiar with?
A: I have a myspace, but that was my primary thing before college. I just made a skype account so I can video chat with people who aren’t in my area.
Q: So, I know that you have said numerous times that you refuse to get a twitter account, why don’t you want one?
A: I think that twitter is very narcissistic. It’s probably a cool site but from the looks of it people update too much about the random things they’re doing that nobody cares about.
Q: How do you think social media has changed the way people communicate?
A: Nobody bothers to pick up the phone anymore and they definitely don’t hand write letters anymore. Social media has increased the width and the decreased depth of relationships.
At the end of the interview her roommate leaves the table and announces that she’s going to clean her room then take a shower, my friend calls back, “Thanks for the update, why don’t you tweet that.”
Aliciea:
I must admit that I used to be just like your friend. I remember hearing about Twitter on TV for the first time, and swore I’d never get one. It probably didn’t help that what I saw on TV were skits making fun of Twitter, which automatically made me think it catered to the dorky celebrity stalkers. This semester, right as classes were starting up, my friend started talking to me about how many people she was following on Twitter and how much fun it was. I’m a celebrity blog junkie: I check Web sites like Perez Hilton, JustJared and DListed multiple times a day. She asked me why I would waste my time reading about articles that were only speculation when I could just follow the celebrities on Twitter and get the truth straight from them. I caved and finally decided to get one, knowing I would probably have to get one for my classes anyways.
I’m now like you; I check Twitter way more than I check Facebook. I agree that Facebook is too into our personal lives…I personally didn’t appreciate the dating website advertisements posted all over the side of my page after my boyfriend and I broke up. It creeped me out too much. I feel like Facebook is really only good for Farmville and other stupid applications now. I get more notifications about how I should invite people to join stuff than I do about actual posts put on my wall. Twitter is much better…it’s much easier and quicker to stay in touch with people this way. And you don’t have to worry about parents or relatives seeing that picture from last weekend someone is sure to tag you in. It’s much better for networking professionally.
Social media are such a big part of our career field now that we can’t afford to pick picky with which forms we use. We as PR practitioners are almost expected to be fluent with all social media now. I’m glad I joined Twitter…I feel like it opened the doorway into social media for me more than Facebook ever could.
I understand why people who don’t know a lot about Twitter would reject it. I was always pretty indifferent to it, until I got an account, and then I, like you, fell in love with it. I think it is a common misconception that Twitter is all about narcissism. And it’s not that that is totally inaccurate–a LOT of people who use Twitter are narcissistic. But many people use it as a tool to share news, disseminate information, etc., and many organizations use it to promote their product, or to keep tabs on their publics and their opinions. Celebrities do more or less the same as those organizations, as all a celebrity is really trying to do is sell themselves. All in all, I think people who hate Twitter haven’t given it a chance and don’t understand that Twitter has evolved into something more sophisticated than the simple question of “What are you doing?”
Good thoughts about Twitter and the interview was a nice touch. I too have to admit that I was hesitant to use Twitter, but really I can’t ignore its potential. Folks can get news and information out quickly without having to rely on third parties. That’s really great for PR in that you can get out some news without having to call up the traditional media. You see this with celebrities posting break-ups on Twitter. You hear it from the person directly. Maybe that’s still narcissistic, but it’s still cool. Plus the real time search feature is cool.