There is a new culture clash on the internet. It is called status updates vs. tweets. Since twitter programs started to export tweets to facebook, it is haunted. Two different logics of private news seem to collide. Tweets crash upon facebooks status messages, infect them with strange signs and pile up messily on an otherwise neat activity stream. Indeed facebookers update their status rarely, maybe about 2-4 times a day max. This makes the twitterers laugh out loud, because what happens daily on facebook is their speed per hour. Or as the journalist @akreye of „Die Süddeutsche“ twittered:
Speedfreaking on the interweb – if you follow Twitter, Facebook and blogs appear to be incredibly slow. Saves me time to read the paper.
On the other hand some of my facebook friends feel run over and start ranting at twitter.
why does a twitter “@username” make sense when you’re spamming all your friends, all the time, @facebook??? must a # always precede something extremley obvious that me@facebook might #fuckingcareabout?
Why can’t these private news platforms get along?
At first sight facebook and twitter seem to be quite similar. Both make use of a private news stream which consists of rather short messages. But if you have a closer look, you recognize the flow of communication functions totally different.
Facebook is like meeting your friends at the bus station. You show up, drop some lines and leave after a little while. Furthermore it is very well behaved communication. Posts turn into dialogues, where everyone refers to something and finishes speaking – parents and teachers would be delighted. Indeed we can call it pretty humanistic, because it is very human centred communication. An elegant organisation to keep up with your friends and acquaintances in a more and more complex and flexible world. It is about communication to a private public and less about #issues you want to follow – even though facebook is eagerly working on a search engine for its activity stream. .
Re-Tweeting is more important than replying
Compared to the small creek of updates on facebook the chaotic twitter stream is much more used to propose some news, themes, issues or personal views. It is basically organized by timeline and #keywords. Communication between each other is possible, but not the most important thing. Re-tweeting for example is more important than replying. It is an ongoing news stream you can hook up to or drop out whenever you want to, because it is a flow of personal news and views and links that people and institutions are posting which you choose to follow.
Turn on twitter and you will – thanks to time difference – always be entertained, because for sure there will be someone posting the breaking news, pointing out a good article to read, a hilarious video to look at, praise a new podcast or speech you might be interested in or just makes some funny remarks about life (because there is always a reason for that).
So both fulfil different functions: While twitter is about making your private views and preferences publicly available, facebook is about talking to and organizing your private public. Both makes sense: We live in a time of information overload, because there has been a media shift in the last decade.
Friends are filters
Think back of how things used to be: There was a time we had to make an effort to get informed. We had to switch on the radio or the television or buy a newspaper. Getting information was an active endeavour. Nowadays it is different. The news follow us everywhere. They accompany us to work on the radio, free paper or on our smartphone. They have to be looked at during work to be up to date or they update us themselves on a screen while we wait somewhere in a shop. And not only news want to be seen. Every minute we get a new mail in our inbox. People can reach us constantly on our mobile phones. Face it: In the digital world of today we are constantly overloaded with information, and that|s not going to change. We better deal with that. Here’s were our friends come in.
To handle information overload there is not a better guideline than where your friends go or what they look at, read or say. They are the perfect filter for things that interest you, because you share common ground. You get everything from them you are interested in and all in one platform, private news and breaking news, entertainment and useful information. Therefore the time of the private public and the private news just has started.
By the way, it will be really interesting how journalism will deal with this. With twitter and facebook, personal news are read on the same platforms as traditional news. Journalism just learnt that readers can help with reporting (#iranelection) or research (MPs’ expenses). Now we are already moving fast forward to the next challenge: Readers can be distributers to. Anyway, one thing is certain: The Twitter vs. facebook war is just the beginning.
currently selling – oh, sold !!! one book about robert park (chicago school)- yes, the readers as the gatekeepers – as faz put it … but, do we have more gates than readers now ??? more gates than the reading of the input… it´s still one very old fashioned skill needed: selection (s-el-l-ection)… on what ground… trust your friends???
the chicago school ever took the readers serious, they had been the reader´s readers… especially the stuff that escaped the consciousness of these (1st) readers… so, a new wave of deconstruct the consciousness of your friends… the real hot data to park had been the “news” that escaped the common and contemporary people … everyone is that common and contemporary people and everyone is that selector…
paik said, it´s not the technics – it´s the people who are able to change the technics – it´s not the people who are only using the technical facilities – it´s the people who change it (this too, to paik had been the definition of the artist – the artist changes, he doesn´t use..)
your examples tell about using the technical world, it´s not about to change it (this means, you´ll have a talk with the developers, … do the developers talk and when to whom…?? they cannot talk to the users, these are, to paik, the wrong ones – who are the fitting people, the dreamers??) – so, we have a very technical world that escapes the people??? we have a hidden communication problem – because the engineers and developers don´t know to whom they should talk – we have much technical development without an open discourse about it´s circumstances and possibilities -
another quite interesting controversy: facebook vs. myspace
http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html
@Julien – not so sure, if the point that you make about changing technology is still right.. maybe these platforms are about change already, with the all the applications that you can develop for them.
@anon – thanks for the link, very interesting debate indeed!
is “news” better when you publish 40 times a day?
so, more is better? lots of spontaneous impressions are real news.
or just a reflection of how bored you might be (or your friends) and how easy it is to publish, especially when you’re waiting for the bus or subway or not working.
there is no battle between facebook or twitter. both were meant to be a diary of thoughts. not news. maybe an extension.. or new form of marketing research.
friends as filters? that reminds me of the emperor’s new clothes.
why would anyone construct a reality based purely on the shared opinions of people they already know (or admire) unless they truly don’t have a clue themselves?
love that pic. hut auf.
it’s easy to turn off unnecessary news from boring “people”. the only thing left is the aging blog.
Mercedes, I am totally with you on the war-issue between facebook and twitter. I can observe it on my own behavoir: Instead of checking facebook a few times a day I am now constantly following twitter whenever I am online which includes mobile devices as well. I really have to remind myself to also visit facebook to check what my friend instead of the people I follow are doing. I am very curious about where this will finally lead us but the change in our communication is remarkable!
Also, I am pretty sure that the development will have a big impact on media in general. As a truely conservative print reader I am about to quit my subscription for my daily newspaper because I just don’t have the time to read it anymore. On the same time I am feeling very well informed by twitter and all the links I get from there.
We definitively live in times of a new media revolution. For myself I always wish that I will be able to catch up!
Here is an very interesting link regarding an interview with Chris Anderson from wired.com on internet publishing: http://www.synecstasy.com/2009/07/31/not-everything-we-do-has-to-make-money/