Most of you know I'm an avid user of Facebook and Twitter. I've been active on Facebook for a few years, and on Twitter for just about a year. I consider both of them important parts of my online life, though originally, for different reasons. Now I find the two are merging for me.
From the beginning, Facebook was a place for me to keep in touch with new and old friends, and I've really enjoyed it. For the most part, I only "friended" people I knew and though sometimes that meant a person I only had the vaguest memory of from high school, it was important for me to keep it free from "clutter" by only accepting requests from people I had some familiarity with.
Twitter, on the other hand, began as a place where I created new relationships, mainly publishing and writing-related. It's worked beautifully--I've made so many new friends, acquaintances, and contacts, and I've learned so much about the industry. I've said this before, and I'll say it again--if you are in any sort of field where self-promotion and contacts are important, you gotta be on Twitter. Learn to use it and use it well, because it is your friend.
Because of the different uses I had for Facebook and Twitter, I expressed myself differently on each. On Facebook I tended to post more personal, random things, because the people there knew me. On Twitter, I tried to keep it more professional, sticking mostly to writing links and sharing information.
But after a year of creating relationships on Twitter, many of whom I've now met face-to-face or at least had conversations with, my Twitter world has intertwined with my Facebook world.
You know what? I like it. It means the business contacts I've made on Twitter have become more personal--certainly not the same as the ones I've had for years--but I count several among my friends now. And to me, that's what social media is about: creating authentic, mutually beneficial, and yes, personal, relationships.
The only downside I can think of is that I'm a lot more careful now about what I post on Facebook. The merging relationships on Twitter and Facebook mean Holly West, writer, and Holly West, joe-schmoe, are the same and one represents the other. So although I still post a some random stuff on both sites, I'm at least cognizant of the fact that I am, hopefully, creating an audience, and that what I say, whether good or bad, has repercussions.
What about you? Do you find yourself using Twitter and Facebook differently? Has the way you interact on each of them changed over time?
