Twitter People vs. Facebook People

Since 2004 Facebook is the brand name associated with social media. Twitter has been something of a much maligned younger sibling in the social media world since it stumbled home drunk two years later.  That is the difference between Facebook people and Twitter people.

On Facebook everyone is a polished, Cosby Show/Brady Bunch version of themselves. On Twitter everyone seems to be the sarcastic, hungover,  Jackass version of themselves.

There’s a chance Mark Zuckerberg will sue me for using the word Facebook 800 times in this blog post. Twitter will buy me a shot and retweet the link to this 800 times.

If Facebook and Twitter were movies, Facebook would be The Little Mermaid and Twitter would be The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

On Facebook you can follow all manner of celebrity but you’re still held back by a velvet rope. It’s a one way street of communication. On Twitter, if @AmandaBynes says she just set a fire in her driveway I can suggest she throw water on it and she might even thank me.

@shaylamaddox: Twitter makes me like people I’ve never met and Facebook makes me hate people I know in real life

On Facebook if George Takei posts a hilarious picture of Spock and Captain Kirk engaged in relations I can’t ask George where he got it or if William Shatner would mind if I posted it. Doing research for this I used Twitter to contact the artist, Kiersten Essenpreis,  of the cartoon above and the person Shayla Maddox, another artist, who actually tweeted the caption inspiring the cartoon. That’s Twitter, where everyone gets down in the mud and wrestles with everyone else. Click their names to check out Shayla and Kiersten’s websites. They’re both very talented artists.

On Facebook I post pictures of all my festive holiday ties. On Twitter I wear a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off to show off my tattoo.

Typical Facebook status by me: Only 8 hours until I’m on vacation!

Typical Tweet by @FunkyFresh_79: I just saw a pancake in a tutu outside of IHOP and I’m not sure if aroused is a strong enough word for what I’m feeling right now.

Don’t get me wrong. like a parent with two kids, I love both Twitter and Facebook equally, but in different ways. On Facebook you find old friends and on Twitter you make new friends. Facebook is a class reunion while Twitter is the first day, or maybe night, staying in a college dorm. You have to be invited to the Facebook party while on Twitter party crashing is encouraged.

SquirrelArmy Tornado @Mikecanrant: Stuffing a bag of live chickens in the microwave for 3 minutes does NOT make popcorn chicken. In fact, it makes a mess. A horrible mess.

Before you get the wrong impression about my thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, let me tell you how I got sucked in. A year and a half ago I set up a Twitter account but rarely used it. Then I tuned into Twitter during the Super Bowl and it was like a great big conversation about the game; like you’d have in a bar talking with friendly strangers.  A few months after that I was on a business trip to Florida when suddenly I felt a little buzz in my pocket. A Twitter notification? I had never gotten one before! I only had 34 followers at the time. @GregoryGAllen, an author and HuffPo columnist whom I had never heard of, was tweeting out to his over 3,000 followers that he was reading my novel White Picket Prisons. I was stunned and amazed. I had no idea how he found me. I messaged him to ask and it turns out that a blog post of mine had gained some viral traction and had been shared by one of his Facebook friends. In that instance, without any crude jokes, Twitter and Facebook came together to make something amazing happen.

This is a perfect example of Twitter:

Chris Sherk @TheIronSherk: All of my life has led to this moment, trying to write the perfect Meatloaf tweet Once I do, everything else will be gravy.

That’s Twitter for you. Not everyone will get the joke, but the right people will.

As always, if you enjoyed #ThePhilFactor please hit the Facebook and Twitter share buttons below and feel free to follow me on both as well. Have a great weekend!