Questions About Facebook And Twitter

Here are some questions about Facebook and Twitter arising from my ongoing web communication experiment.

Feel free to answer any or all — although most of you reading this likely won’t answer any, because you’re in passive media consumption mode, as are most people. (Nothing wrong with that — being active sure takes up a lot of time.)

Does it make sense to pick a few active Twitterers (Twits?) who you like following and follow everyone else they are following so that you can keep up with the whole conversation, i.e. become part of the whole community gathered around that person? I was thinking of trying this with Connie Reece. (Hi, Connie, if you’re readying this.) With a blog, you can just subscribe to RSS and then read comments, but with Twitter you’re only partially wired in unless you’re part of an entire group. So often on Twitter you overhear half a conversation, which is odd.

When does it make sense to stop following people on Twitter whose tweets haven’t interested you — especially if they never address any comments at your tweets. Is this rude? Is there a nice way to break up? Dear Twit letter? How long should you hold on before cutting ties?

When does a group make more sense on Facebook vs. on the open web on a platform like Ning? The value proposition of Facebook is privacy, i.e. sharing with ONLY a defined group of people, not the whole world. But discussion boards on Facebook groups can be viewed by anyone on Facebook. So what’s the value of having them behind the Facebook wall — why not on the open web where anyone can discover them, especially through search? I suppose one value of having them on Facebook is that you can meet and connect with other group members — couldn’t you do that on the open web if Facebook were more open?
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UPDATE:** Seth Goldstein says that “closed is the new open,” so maybe it’s all better on Facebook.

Same question about “breaking up” with “friends” on Facebook — is there an etiquette? The purpose would be to prune the friends tree to create a network with a more coherent definition — is that worth it? Does it require having things to share that you would want to exclude people who don’t fit your definition from seeing?

Is anyone following me on Twitter without a Twitter account, i.e. just going to twitter.com/scottkarp? If so, any value? For those of you following me on Twitter, since I’m following all of you, feel free to answer the “any value” question on Twitter or here.

That’s all for now.