Social Verses

Every once in a while, when I follow someone, I get a DM asking me to “friend” them on Facebook.  I’ve never understood that because Facebook is not the same as Twitter.  To me, the paradigm is completely different. Like it or not, having a large number of followers on Twitter is a guage of prestige. Having a large number of friends on Facebook doesn’t have the same level of importance. It’s just not a big deal to have a lot of friends on Facebook.

That got me to thinking about how I use the various social media sites.  I definitely have a division of labor between each of the sites.  Do you use them the same way I do?

Twitter

If you read my post about Why I Tweet, you’ll know that I think of Twitter as a microblog.  I use Twitter to throw out random thoughts to the world to see what sticks.  I don’t care who’s reading it or why.  I’m expressing my opinion like standing on a soap box in Hyde Park.  Anyone who cares to listen, can.  And because of that, I try not to get personal too often.

Facebook

Facebook is more for people who know me.  I post personal status updates, post family photos (my kid’s birthday party or a recent trip), and have fun taking personality tests that would only really mean anything to someone who knew me.  It’s more akin to a (very large) private dinner party than a public soapbox.  So if you just met me on Twitter, I’m not going to be your Facebook friend, so don’t ask me.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an ingenious idea.  It is (or should be) strictly professional and works on the premise of business networking.  You don’t have friends, you have Connections.  And your Connections’ Connections are what make up your Network.  So if you need someone with a particular set of skills, but don’t know anyone with them, it is a good bet that someone in your network does.  And you can use your Connections to contact them. I mainly keep in touch with former colleagues on LinkedIn and what they are up to professionally.  I am LinkedIn to a few personal friends, but there, it’s all about business.

MySpace

I don’t get MySpace.  I joined because I had to get in touch with someone who wasn’t answering their emails, but I knew was active on MySpace.  So I created an account to send them MySpace mail.  At the time, I decided to complete my profile to see what the buzz was about.  I lost interest quickly.

MySpace, to me, was just a bunch of self-promoting billboards.  There was no real interaction.  They have status and mood updates now, but it’s still more about you than it is about your relationships.  I don’t know if becoming more like Facebook helped them.  But by the time they added that functionality, I had already moved on.

Plaxo

Plaxo started out as one giant address book.  I really liked the idea because your friends could update their contact information and you could get the update instantly.  The problem is, like most address books, that it doesn’t get updated.  People forget about it and it’s not better than my paper address book at home.

FriendFeed

I haven’t figured out FriendFeed yet.  I don’t really use it because I don’t see how it’s different from Twitter.  I’ve been told the signal to noise ratio is better, but most postings there end up on Twitter anyway.

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What bothers me about a lot of these social media sites is that they are all trying to jump on the Facebook bandwagaon.  Due to the success of Facebook, all are trying to copy it in some manner or another now with status updates and the like.  But they really shouldn’t.  Each social media site really has its niche.  They should stick with what they started out doing and do it well.  People aren’t going to use their site because it does what Facebook does.  People use Facebook for Facebook.  They aren’t going to jump ship just because the same feature is now on a different site.  But they will use sites for something unique that Facebook (or any other social media site for that matter) doesn’t have.

My name is Norton Lam and I am a social media addict.

While I’ve had (inactive) Friendster and MySpace accounts for a number of years, I really got started in social media through my job at a small startup in the Twin Cities. I got involved with Facebook in late ‘07 and Twitter in late ‘08 and it’s those two sites that really piqued my interest in “social media.”

Even with my involvement with social media, I would not call myself an “expert” in the field. There are a lot of people a lot smarter than me when it comes to social media. However, I do have some “expertise,” both as a user and as a developer.

I’m a Java developer by trade and have been for 12 years. I recently developed links from a web application to Facebook and Twitter as well as a couple of stand-alone Facebook applications (one for work, and one on my own). I will be expanding those efforts into MySpace and OpenSocial in the near future. It’s in these development efforts that I got involved in social media and really began to understand them–and then became an addict.

How did you learn about the social media site you use?

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