RT @Ghostwriter28

Ok - now that my Facebook profile has been deactivated for an entire month (I hadn't posted since October anyway), I think I'd better hurry & give my 2 cents on why I ultimately prefer Twitter before I lose complete touch with what Facebook is.

Right now, there's just too much shit goin on with Facebook, between gettin poked by someone who never speaks or calls, declining numerous invites from shameless club/party promoters (only to have fresh invites take the place of those deleted by the end of the day), being tagged in everyone else's photo albums (usually without permission), side-stepping Mafia Wars & FarmVille requests daily, I just needed an indefinite break from it all.

Then there's the issue with Facebook's ever-changing privacy terms & toggles (causing me to NEVER fully understand what is & isn't being published in the Newsfeeds of friends & strangers alike). I haven't got much to hide, but that doesn't mean I enjoy being investigated by past, present & potential employers, lovers & haters either, lol.

Just how much info is considered too much to share in a status update nowadays? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the judge reduced the amount of debt you owe a creditor, but should this really be the type of shit posted as your current status? I don't know, maybe I'm just gettin old. But ironically, those who post these kinds of status updates would be far better suited for a social networking website like Twitter, where the posting of random thoughts & activities are actually encouraged.

I'm also wondering if chronic use of social networking as a primary means of communication among peers/associates weaken our ability to communicate with 1 another in real life. Quite honestly, I love the idea of Facebook in essence, but I think we've grown so accustomed to sharing news with 'friends' via Facebook status updates that we've severely handicapped our own ability (or willingness) to reach-out & actually touch people.

Do you truly value 167 posts to your wall, all wishing you a happy birthday, when it's clear that outside of 6 people, none of you 639 'friends' would have a clue (or really even care if they did) that it's your birthday if not for the barrage of wall posts from others alerting them of the fact? But truthfully speaking, I image many people DO love the attention, artificial as it may be.

The thing that initially drew me to Facebook was the fact that you knew that most of your peers were almost guaranteed to have an active profile there. A great tool for reconnecting with people you haven't heard from in years. But that too grew to become a stale feature for me & I found myself wanting to be less accessible to people with each login. Shit, between this blog & my Twitter page, I think that's more that enough info for the typical stranger anyway.

I didn't really see much on-going discourse on Facebook outside of the funniest YouTube post of the morning or some woman proclaiming how's she's done with men for good while 37 of her equally bitter friends chime in to share the moment as well, lol. It became more & more difficult to filter-out all of Facebook's bullshit & get to the news & thoughts of the people I actually logged-in to see. As a result, I went another route about 2 years back & I've never been happier.

"I tried Twitter, but I just don't get it." <-- This is probably the most common thing I hear about Twitter from folks who aren't regular users of the website. The statement slightly amuses me since you really couldn't come up with much more of a simple concept than Twitter. You simply update your profile with what your doing, thinking, wondering or whatever. 9 times out of 10, someone in the Twitter-World has a thought or opinion on what you just imparted. But people use Twitter in all kinds of different ways & I guess that's what makes it so difficult to fully explain.

Companies find Twitter useful as an unofficial customer service/public relations forum. Celebrities tweet alot, allowing for unheralded access to voice what you liked & what you didn't. You're almost blown away whenever a celebrity or other high profile individual reads your thoughts & actually replies to you directly. The access Twitter gives the everyday Joe in regard to voicing such opinions about artists, businesses, politicians so on & so fourth is simply put, amazing! Also impressive is Twitter's ability to break news, & break it fast. It's very rare to find a piece of major news in another portal before it's already being discussed in the Twitterverse - it's almost to the point where if it hasn't been tweeted, it's not news...

I think the frustration experienced by some has much to do with the fact that they expect (or want) Twitter to be another Facebook - that's never been the case & I hope it never will be. I imagine the 1st thing a recent convert notices about Twitter is that there are no photo galleries, games or in-depth user profile sections within Twitter's user interface. That's a good thing as Twitter's user interface & overall simplicity really doesn't lend itself towards the over-blown perceptions or misrepresentations of oneself in an attempt to impress others.

RT @Ghostwriter28: You ARE what you TWEET & those various chunks of insight, fuckery & news go a long way towards shaping the following you attract...