I've had a love-hate-back to love relationship with Twitter. It went into the serious love relationship when I downloaded Twitbin for Firefox. Twitbin puts the updates on the left hand margin of my screen so I have an ongoing dialog running and can get news updates, friend updates, and other internet thought leader updates during the day. It really makes it easy and removed one of the challenges I had with Twitter which was to open another tab and hit refresh to see what was going on. It is like having an unlimited IM friends list without the annoying blinking when someone wants to find me. However, Facebook for me is getting pushed aside.
This isn't to write that I think there are flaws with Facebook. I just think that Twitter solves a lot of professional issues with Facebook. To me the updating features in Facebook was what made it so interesting to the non-college aged crowd. You can post updates of yourself and then see updates from your friends, however Twitter is Facebook updates on steroids. The links that get posted on Facebook are easily pushed out on Twitter without all of the annoying content or images that take up space; Twitter - you have 140 characters to push your message out. Sure Twitter is text based, but you can always get a link to pictures and videos.
Now we Professionals can keep our Rolodex LinkedIn product and couple it with Twitter to get into the update mode without having to resort to Facebook which to me has become inundated with gadgets, join requests, and gaming requests; so much so that I really don't understand the point of joining a cause that requires me to take no action.
Between my blog, RSS reader, LinkedIn, and Twitter updates I keep that professional internet feel all while participating in the update world with other professionals. I'm starting not to miss Facebook. Now if only some of the companies using Facebook to push updates out will turn to Twitter; that would be the unobtrusive, short text way to go.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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