People are generally lazy. I understand this. We’re human. But there’s one place where I have to insist that we kick the need to cut corners. Please walk away from the dreaded Twitter/Facebook status “sync”, avoid the want for speed, and just take a minute to update both our Twitter and Facebook statuses separately.
PLEASE?
We all love being able to update one social media network and have said update roll through to all of our profiles to share with everyone, on every social network we happen to be on what were up to. I get this. But it has to stop. It’s not that much effort and it will make all the difference. I promise. Recently I’ve been reading too many status updates on Facebook that I know were meant for Twitter. You know how I know? Because it wasn’t in English, it was in Chirpish (hmm, that’s a new one)… I’m seeing way too many RT’s, @, and # symbols flying across Facebook Newsfeeds…
PLEASE STOP DOING THIS
If you’ve been on Twitter and taken more than a tertiary glance you certainly understand that there are unwritten points of etiquette. Acronyms rule and appropriate passing of information is expected. An interesting link must give credit to the source. I love this, as do many of you that read this blog. The issue is that not all of your Facebook friends have caught up, and will undoubtedly think you either have no idea how to type, or you’ve completely lost your mind.
Imagine what it may look like to Facebook friends when you find a link to a great article, so you re-tweet. Although, since you’re an avid Tweeter, you don’t stop there. You add your own 2 cents at the close of the 140 characters, add a # sign to indicate the subject you’ve just re-tweeted: it may look something like this:
Now imagine you’ve never been on Twitter, you have no idea what RT stands for (Re-tweet; or essentially passing something on that was not originally Tweeted by you, rather someone you follow and you want to share), and you see that silliness in a Facebook status….what does “@”mean? What’s RT? Is that a link?
HORRIBLE
Think of it this way;
Facebook is a house party with mostly family and friends with a token few people from the office that might get your family jokes every now and again.
Twitter is the office party where some family is invited, that may get your work jokes every now and again.
You change your tone, topics, and intonation in each social situation, right? You should do the same when thinking about status updates, and Tweets. Now do you see my point?
I’ll leave you with a simple request. If updating your Twitter account and your Facebook account separately is too time consuming and If you’ve thought of a gem, I’m ok with a good ole’ copy and paste, but please for the love of Twitterdome, and for the fun of Facebooking PLEASE walk away from the status synch.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
For once, Chris, I disagree with you. A status update is a status update and I now communicate with both groups pretty much the same. Twitter is @ replies. FB is status update comments. Some people like talking on FB. Some like Twitter. I’m not planning anytime soon to break this up.
I also disagree, Chris. But I do take your point to playing to both crowds and their differences.
How about this: make your posts as generic as possible. When I RT on twitter, I use my twitter client to say ‘(via @BretLinford)’ instead of RT. That’s much move friendly to my FB friends. They may not know exactly what that is but it’s not as cryptic as RT.
Chris – I’ll generally agree that constant Twitter feeds to a Facebook profile is annoying and unnecessary. But I do think there are ways where we can be efficient and still kill two birds (no pun intended
with one Stone (pun intended there – ala Biz Stone). For example, most Twitter apps such as TweetDeck and Twhirl offer the option to also post select tweets to Facebook. Also, the Selective Twitter Status app within Facebook let’s you be discriminating by simply adding #fb to the end of a tweet to update your Facebook status.
Perhaps these auto-syncs are more useful for brands updating Facebook Pages instead of Profiles, but I doubt most can discount the power of efficiency!
I hate seeing #hashmarks in my Facebook feed, but as both a Twitterer and Facebook user, it’s nice to see people quoted as @username. I’ll sometimes find new people to follow this way through Facebook that I wouldn’t have otherwise found on Twitter.
My 2-cents FWIW…. thanks for sharing your insight!
@sherrymain
You also keep your facebook followers in mind when Tweeting, that’s certainly not always the case. I think perhaps you’re in the minority (as CEO of a company in the Social Media space) with Facebook friends that are mostly on both Twitter and Facebook. Perhaps the caveat should be “If your facebook friends are on Twitter as well, it’s ok” – but think of someone that doesn’t have a Twitter account and they see a synced Facebook/Twitter statues like this one from @joeciarallo: RT: @lazerow: I’m LIVE right now on BTR’s Social Media Remix show. Learn how to DOMINATE social media today: http://bit.ly/2OQsRK (expand) Pls RT. If you don’t understand what RT stands for it could come off as confusing. We’re the select few that not only love Social Media, but we make our living via Social Media. We shouldn’t take it for granted that everyone understands the lingo. I’d recommend maybe directing them to a guide for new Twitter users like this: http://kikolani.com/twitter-lingo-tips-twitter-facebook-users.html
Bret, I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems that some people tend to get into a flurry of activity on Twitter that posts to their Facebook status and makes no sense whatsoever. Appreciate you taking the time to add a comment. Thanks!
Thanks Sherry – maybe the message here is that if syncing, just be aware that not everyone is going to get the “lingo” Thanks for taking the time to post a comment!
I agree– I update both facebook and twitter on their own accounts. I don’t want to share everything with certain people. I tend to use twitter more in a business capacity to push messages out and Facebook for social and business. Also, I don’t really care to see RT’s on Facebook
JLR
Hello Chris,
I am Rmercader thanks for using my tweet, and thanks for spreading the word of the upcoming tweet up in Detroit.
I used to feed my twitter stream into my facebook updates. Whenever I tweeted I made sure that my tweets would make sense on both Twitter and Facebook. I also had it set up that a reply or RT would not feed into my facebook status. About a few months ago I stopped feeding my Twitter updates into my Facebook status because I realized that Twitter had its own language that Facebook users didn’t understand.
There’s a new app in iTunes called TwitFace now that let’s you update either Facebook or Twitter (or both), but your accounts don’t have to be linked, which I like.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=327508461&mt=8