Well, literally speaking, this needs no further explanation because they obviously have different domain names. But what I meant was that I found the two are on a completely different platform all together. Where my Facebook account is filled with acquaintances from home and the everyday people that I meet or have met, my twitter account is filled people that I meet virtually. Probably about 99% of the people that I talk to and interact with are people that I’ve never met!
And no, I don’t see it as a negative thing! It is this twitter philosophy that makes it such a different and intriguing social networking site. Facebook is filled with people that dislike being added by strangers (at least in my part of the world) and while that gives a certain sense of security, it certainly takes the edge off in terms of interactivity and connectivity (which I think is one of the major goals of social networking). Twitter, however, has a much more open-minded crowd that loves to connect no matter who you are… and that same crowd really opened my eyes to a whole new world. Twitter is not Facebook. Definitely not.
2 – Simplicity
When you’re new at twitter and you’ve just created an account, the first thing that’s gonna hit you is how simple Twitter is. I mean, for a site that has approximately 190million users and has just reached its 10 billionth tweet recently, it really is just a simple, uncomplicated, easy-to-use platform of massive connectivity.
(Hears Facebook and Myspace users saying: “BUT ITS GOT NO GAMESSSSSSS”)
All the more impressive then. Twitter’s simplicity and ease of use has simply found a niche that could attract users to interact without all the fuss of having interactive applications.
3 – Connectivity is easy, connection?
Like I’ve mentioned in the above couple of points, getting connected in Twitter is definitely easy. Twitter’s platform has easily allowed any twitter users, new or not, to connect with other twitter users. However, getting a huge number of followers and maintaining that connection are two different things altogether. Connections are made when you interact, when you take a few minutes to say hello, to ask how they’re doing, and to simply be there. Like being in a party and you’ve seen all these people around you and you just need to approach them with a hello and kick-start your conversation from there. I certainly noticed that Twitter is not fun without having connections. So for any new user like me, well, I guess it takes time to break that ice and just start saying hello!
4 – Prospects, Prospects, Prospects
After finding out about the inner workings of twitter from my good friend @, I really think Twitter is unlike any other social networking site in terms of prospects. Strictly speaking, it is for businesses to come up and take advantage of the availability of marketing prospects in Twitter. And I believe, despite reports of saying that this isn’t true, that it could be done. They just don’t know how yet. Heck, why don’t they @, maybe he knows.
5 – Virtual communities… and then some
The last but not the least most impressive thing about Twitter is that how easy it is to find reconstructed virtual communities that you can connect with through similar interests. If you’re into quotes, go to #quotes. If you’re into football (both European and American), go to #football. It’s that simple and by connecting with these communities you’d then be able to meet with people of the same interest…which would then make you more active in Twitter because you’d be more comfortable there. And by communities, I mean TONS of em. There are literally thousands of communities you can interact with!
