A Tale of Two Social Networks

I wrote earlier about re-publishing content across different social networks. I've recently concluded that really, there are two different social networks. There's Facebook, and then there's the sum of everything else.

The idea was initial seeded by classmate of mine, who insisted that the audiences are different and must be treated differently. She uses twitter to make protected updates with a handpicked circle of real life friends, much like a private, asynchronous, logged chat room (rather than as the public, asynchronous, logged chat room that it is). Her case is the extreme - her audiences are different because she's made them different.

In my case, the audiences are different because of content. This blog talks mostly about technology and marketing, something most of my real life friends and family aren't all that interested in. They want to see pictures of me out in D.C., not product comparisons on social bookmarking. Likewise, readers here are more interested in those technical discussions, but less interested in my personal musings while exploring the National Mall. They're different groups, and should be treated differently.

So I've disconnected Twitter from Facebook. I'm going to continue to use and update them both, but separately. FriendFeed and Twitter will host streams on technology and marketing, and Facebook will host a stream of more personal interactions. It's like maintaining separate professional and personal email accounts, or not subjecting your friends to work-related technical discussions.

Which we've all been doing for years.