I remember it quite well. It was 2005. My sisters were going nuts over a website called MySpace, and so, apparently, was everyone else. It was an instant window into other people's (night) lives! You could see what your favorite bands were up to and listen to their music! You got to be friends with Tom whether you liked it or not! It was a paradise burrito wrapped in a tortilla of pure joy. And I just didn't get it.
Sure, I opened up an account and put a few pictures up. I posted updates every now and then and became instantly sad to know that no one cared. Mostly, I remembered sitting up at 3 or 4 in the morning, pirating (I mean downloading) music from Limewire, filling out inane quiz after inane quiz and re-posting my results simply to feel as though I was participating in whatever was happening.
Around that time, when I was absolutely desperate for some kind of social networking service that would allow me to chase after girls without feeling like a sexual predator, a friend of mine introduced me to a new website that required a college email address to join. I was elated. Finally, an escape from the ugly, jumbled, teenage-dominated MySpace. Facebook was the new, shiny savior.
It takes some effort to recall a time when Facebook was the coolest thing there was, populated by college kids eager to meet other college kids and post pictures of drunken parties that parents would never see, but it did exist, circa 2006.
Now, five years later, Facebook is the biggest thing there is. Everyone has a page, and I mean everyone. It's actually a strange thing to meet someone who doesn't have a Facebook. It is ubiquitous.
Then, a few years ago, a new social networking service emerged. Twitter was immediately dismissed as inconsequential, a passing trend. No one seemed to understand it. I was certainly among those who didn't get it, though it was amusing to watch major news organizations flail about, trying to be on the cutting edge by integrating Twitter into their broadcasts. It's easy to see why. Facebook is a simple concept. Twitter is very abstract. Even now, it's difficult for industry analysts to predict the long term growth of the service, while it's a cinch to see the trajectory Facebook is plotting. However, I'm here to say that I'm a Twitter convert, and that it's easily superior to Facebook. You don't have to take my word for it. Let me tell you why.
1. Twitter is brief
This is huge. Many people, myself included, first balked at Twitter's miniscule character limit. At 140 characters, it's shorter than a single text message. As you may be able to surmise, I'm not a short-winded writer. I like to let my sentences breathe. Facebook has no such limit outside of original posts. Replies can be novel length, so far as I can tell, and if you're talking about politics with your right-wing relatives, they often are.
And that's the problem. Facebook has become, more or less, a late 90s email inbox that everyone can share. Because of the lengthy character allotment, inane, eye-melting bullshit has become the norm. I swear if I have to glance at another wall post that includes a poem about a courageous soldier or a sob story about someone's dead pet that is a re-posted chain message from someone I cannot unfriend, I might inflict serious harm on myself or bystanders.
This is Twitter's strength. It forces precision. Lacking that, it encourages restraint and editing. Furthermore, since there's no native ability to wax loquacious, one has to include links to outside websites to post something of excessive length. Hence the power of tl;dr. If you don't know what that is, Google it.
2. Twitter is the social network for introverts
Facebook has always been about popularity. "How many friends do you have? I have (insert absurdly unrealistic number)! Wow, you don't have that many? People must think you suck!" Try to imagine that with art from Matthew Inman, and you'll get my point.
I've always hated the friend aspect of Facebook. If that sounds ridiculous, fine, but hear me out. Facebook requires you to be friends with someone in order to see their posts, which then populate to your wall, and vice versa, once a friend request has been completed. The problem with this is that you can't filter annoying posts from people without unfriending them, a crime akin to infant murder in some circles. This effectively paralyzes your whole Faceworld. If your Great Aunt Mildred continually posts mildly offensive comments about immigrants or your 6-year old nephew's Farmville account blasts your wall with links imploring you to take up virtual animal husbandry, your choices are: 1) Unfriend. 2) Fuck you.
More often than not, the practical answer is choice 2, as someone you know will get offended that you removed them (or someone they know) from your Facelife.
Twitter employs a different feudal structure. First, Twitterers (?) don't have friends, they have followers. You can follow as many people as you like, and those people's tweets will populate your timeline. If the people you follow don't want to follow you, they don't have to. And vice versa. This allows you to filter what you're seeing without filtering the folks who may be interested in what you thought about over lunch. Essentially, it allows users to remain introverted and social. No small feat, that.
3. @anybody can talk to @anyone about #anything
This aspect is the reason people use Twitter. When you want to talk to someone on Facebook, you can shyly request the chalice of friendship, send them a private message, or hope to contact them through an existing member of their coveted inner circle. It's like the cliques in high school, and like then, the things people say remind you of just how little you know (or want to know) a given person.
Handles (@) and hashtags (#) allow Twitter users to exist in a larger space than the cozy friend groups of Facebook. By mentioning someone's handle, they will see the tweet, whether they follow you or not. Including a hashtag will allow anyone to search the tagged subject, regardless of when or by whom it was tweeted. Essentially, this builds on the previous point. There's no need to commit your timeline (read: wall) to a particular user permanently like Facebook requires, unless you want to. You can be as attached, or unattached, as you want to be, and still be a participant.
4. Facebook is getting kind of fucking weird
Is it just me, or does Facebook seem to be getting more megalomaniacal lately? I mean, in addition to integrating itself into seemingly every aspect of web life and mobile application development, they're toying with media streaming services to rival Netflix, VOIP calling to rival Skype and Google Voice, and even teaming with HTC to make a phone that is more or less a Facebook device (and dubiously named the Cha Cha, no less).
I'm not saying that megalomania is in itself a bad thing. After all, I wrote half of this post through Evernote on the iPhone and I'm currently finishing with Blogsy on the iPad. And if anyone knows megalomania, it's Apple. Maybe that's why, rather than integrate iOS 5 with Facebook, Apple instead chose to go with Twitter as it's social network of choice. When you think about it, it makes sense. Apple and Facebook teaming up would have been like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signing the non-aggression treaty prior to World War II. There are only so many walled gardens that can occupy the same space.
I guess my issue with Facebook trying to infiltrate every aspect of social interaction is that I find their MO rather tiresome and mundane at this point. Drunken college parties have given way to albums of church barbecues and endless reams of kitten and puppy snapshots. I'm not advocating the re-hedonization of Facebook (that was the death knell of MySpace, after all), but I do lament its domestication, and it's that aspect of domestication that make its forays into world domination seem so pointless and unnatural.
In closing, I'm not giving up my Facebook account, and I don't have an enormous Twitter presence like some do. But that's the point. With Facebook, my reach always seems so limited, regardless of my participation. With Twitter, I feel like I'm a part of something, even if no one else cares.
