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The war of private news has just begun: facebook vs. twitter
Mercedes Bunz | 12 Kommentar(e)
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.
16.07.2009 |
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, too. Anyway, one thing is certain: The Twitter vs. facebook war is just the beginning.
- See also on Carta: Alan Rusbridger on how journalism needs to change and adapt …
Mercedes Bunz blogs here, where you can also find this post.
Hey Mercedes,
I have more and more friends complaining about what their boy- and girl-friends do or don`t do on Facebook. I`d call this: presense politics
I feed my twitter feeds into Facebooks. Now I know, that’s a mischmasch of concepts.
robin
Please, don’t stop feeding your twitter feeds to facebook, one has maybe to leave out the replyings, but that’s it. I mean, anybody can “hide” you on facebook if they think you post too much or too many uninteresting stuff. I “hide” a lot of people. I like that.
And I just had a look, as far as our facebook-friendship goes, I only get your notes, not your tweets. Maybe I am not important enough, hihi. Well, egal. I still like you. ;)
Finally, yes, you are right, there is a new surveillance going on in relationships and there is a new economy of friends. But it is just that part of the social surveillance turned technological. And part of the economy of friends wasn’t outspoken or visible and is now.
English? Really? Seriously?
Speaking of a culture clash I’d be more than pleased if you were so kind as to elaborate – why?
Englischsprachige Texte auf Carta? Bei ausländischen Gastautoren würde ich da gar nichts sagen, schließlich ist Deutsch keine Weltsprache und Carta hat weder das Geld noch die Zeit, Texte zu übersetzen.
Dass aber deutsche Autoren für ein deutschsprachiges Publikum auf Englisch schreiben (oder zumindest Carta solche Texte übernimmt), halte ich für weniger gut. Wie denken andere darüber?
@ erz: Mercedes bloggt zur Abwechslung mal auf Englisch…
Das ist mir nicht entgangen, allein der Grund entfleucht mir.
Die Twitter vs Facebook Debatte ist ohnehin schon exklusiv genug, will Carta (oder auch nur Mercedes Bunz) deren Abkopplung von für die Gesamtgesellschaft relevantem Diskurs so noch deutlicher machen? Möchten Sie noch elitärer wirken?
Oder möchten die Autoren hier einfach nur ihr Englisch üben – von dem man, mit Verlaub, deutlich merkt, dass es nicht ihre Muttersprache ist?
In einem diskursiven Beitrag eines deutschen Mediums, da gebe ich Matthias Schwenk recht, halte ich die Wahl des Englischen für sehr unglücklich, zumal es hier sehr bemüht wirkt. Über die Behauptung, Freunde seien der beste Filter, wurde bis jetzt ja auch dementsprechend wenig diskutiert…
@ erz: Nehmen wir auf. Vielleicht errichten wir einen Übersetzungsservice für die Texte von Mercedes, um jeweils unterschiedliche Wirkung zu testen.
gruss,
rml
One could think this would lead to the push and pull discussion: it doesn’t. Because this discussion is way out of the user’s horizon. This topic seems to be alien to all the people who use these two different generations of social networks with different expectations. btw: the author should make use of the very good sources on the web who did interesting research on these subjects. She then would habe beenn able to describe the differences of these two platforms in a more sophisticated way. In terms of getting deeper into it one has to seperate it by the intentions: 1. is a personal identity and relation management on the one hand and 2. is a realtime mobile multi-purpose tool on the other. There is less characteristics that link the both of it than arguments that show up the opposite…
[...] The war of private news has just begun: facebook vs. twitter — CARTA Facebook is like meeting your friends at the bus station. – Und ja, auch bei mir hat man sich schon beschwert dass ich Twitter mit Facebook vernetzt habe aber in diesem Fall bin ich für: Spread the Content! (Nicht jeder Facebooker ist ja bei Twitter. U. u.) (tags: Twitter gesellschaft Internet) [...]
Um die Frage von weiter oben mal aufzugreifen, ich sehe den Sinn englischer Texte hier auch nicht so recht. Ist mir aber egal, obs englisch oder deutsch ist, solange keiner abfängt in anderern Fremdsprachen zu bloggen… Wobei das als Gag…
das problem der sprachwahl zeigt sich (leider) auch beim verweis auf verwandtes material.
zu dem von mercedes skizzierten “new culture clash on the internet” passt nämlich auch der begriff des “cultural wall” von danah boyd – formuliert in einem vortrag über “the not-so-hidden politics of class online” (http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html) anlässlich des in deutschland sträflich vernachlässigten (= ignorierten) “personal democracy forum” (#pdf09).
bei danah boyd geht es nicht um tweets vs. statusmeldungen, sondern um MySpace vs. Facebook als digitale soziale netze mit grundverschiedenen realweltlichen kontexten und daraus resultierenden “klassenschranken” zwischen den beiden kommunikativ inkompatiblen netzwerken (und so weit liegen twitter und facebook ja längst nicht auseinander, wie die diskussion oben zeigt).
bislang fällt die übertragung von phänomenen wie “digitale kulturkämpfe” (nicht: kulturkämpfe zwischen offlinern und onlinern, davon haben wir in deutschland genug) und der “politics of class” (hier verweigere ich eine übersetzung) auf die deutsche netzwelt extrem schwer – und das liegt nicht nur an der sprache, sondern auch am unterschiedlichen online-entwicklungsstand.
(so, und nun warte ich auf die kommentierer, die sich an der permanenten kleinschreibung stören. mal ganz abgesehen davon, dass ich in mails und blog-kommentaren eigentlich immer so schreibe, passt es hier ganz besonders gut: danah boyd besteht auf der kleinschreibung ihres namens ;-)
Wie bereits im vorherigen Kommentar festgestellt wurde, lohnt sich ein genauerer Blick auf den Vortrag von danah boyd im Rahmen des #pdf09 (Siehe dazu auch: http://www.homopoliticus.de/2009/07/26/zweiklassensystem-im-internet/).
Anders als Facebook und Twitter, die miteinander verknüpft werden können, stellen soziale Netzwerke untereinander räumlich voneinander getrennte Plattformen dar, die es den Nutzern nicht ermöglichen übergreifend miteinander zu kommunizieren. Der aufgezeigte „new culture clash on the internet“ passt deshalb meiner Meinung nach auch sehr gut auf dieses Phänomen. Eventuell heißt es dann sogar eher Facebook vs. StudiVZ statt Facebook vs. Twitter?!?