Forgive me friends, for I have sinned… it’s been over a month since my last news update on Facebook.
How did it happen? Why did I lapse? Where did my Facebook faith go?
I remember those first zealous days of discovery. The joy of reconnecting with old friends… and co-workers and high school classmates and college buds… and ex-girlfriends, in-laws, business associates, guys I played D&D with while Reagan was still president, friends of friends I met at a party once, and even the siblings of schoolmates from elementary school.
I proselytized, I evangelized, I got my friends and family to join.
I spent lunchtime on Facebook. I went on at night after my wife went to bed.
And then something happened.
I discovered Twitter.
I didn’t intend to convert. I avoided Twitter as long as possible. Josef Katz (@directmaestro) said I should tweet, and I resisted. Eleanor Haas (@EleanorHaas), one of the most forward thinking marketing professionals I know, started tweeting and still, I resisted. But then Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) tweeted while interviewing Twitter founder Biz Stone and I was hooked. It was all just so meta.
So I started tweeting.
For a while I did both. I even thought about connecting my Twitter (@jlsimons) to my Facebook.
But my Tweets tended to be about marketing and advertising, and that wasn’t really what Facebook was all about for me. Facebook was about reconnecting with friends, and Twitter was about business.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
But that wasn’t the truth.
It’s time to face the truth.
Twitter is just plain easier. Twitter doesn’t miss me when I don’t tweet, or at least, I don’t feel guilty about not commenting on every tweet I read. Twitter rewards me when I’m relevant… and challenges me to stay relevant. Some of the most interesting articles I’ve read recently I found because someone I follow tweeted them.
I’m not the most prolific tweeter. The total of my tweets wouldn’t add up to a single week of Kevin Smith‘s tweets (@ThatKevinSmith). Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) gets more followers in an hour than I’ve gotten in almost a year.
And still, I tweet. When I find something I think people will appreciate, I tweet it and I feel like I’ve added something useful to a conversation I want to be part of.
When I post a new post on my blog, I usually tweet it. Heck, I might even tweet this.
I almost never tweet about where I’m going or what I’m doing. I never tweet about what I’m eating. I know some people do, and I respect their right to do it. Tweet and let tweet, I always say. (Well, actually, that was the first time. But I’ll probably say it more often now.)
Sure, sometimes I still go to Facebook, but it’s not the same for me anymore. I can’t tell you why, or maybe I just don’t want to know, but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Facebook is now the most popular site on the web and gets more visits than Google.
That would be silly, right, avoiding something just because everyone is doing it? Because then, someday, I’d have to give up tweeting for the same reason.
I’m not the kind of person who does things just because they’re new and shiny. Really I’m not.
But just in case I’m wrong, can someone please explain Foursquare to me?
Can someone please explain...? 