Difference between me on Twitter, me on Facebook and me here.
Most of you aren't my friend on Facebook. That's okay, you're not missing anything. In fact, my Facebook profile was completely dead until Twitter created the Facebook app that republished my tweets. Until yesterday, I basically added no additional content to Facebook than what I posted to Twitter. What changed yesterday?
It started with this tweet I made Friday night:
A few blocks from QWest field at a bar doing food with @jsirois. Everyone is wearing @soundersfc gear. :)
Short, sweet and well under 140 characters.
Well, a friend of mine from college who is only on Facebook left a comment, “Do u ever speak English???? :)” That was backed up by another comment from a mutual friend from college also only on Facebook, “Seriously, what the hell are you talkin’ about? :P (Got your back Jen!)”
The only reason I knew about these comments was because Facebook emailed them to me. I decided to login into Facebook and leave an answer. That went exactly like this (typos and all):
You Facebook people just don’t get Twitter. ;)
Okay here it is in more than 140 characters: “14 hours ago, I sent a text message via my phone to Twitter noting that I was just sitting down to eat dinner at a bar with my good friend Jeff Sirois (who also went to Rolla, by the way). That bar is a few blocks from Qwest field where the Seatlle Sounders Footbal Club (aka: soccer team) play.
Qwest field also happens to be where the Seattle Seahawks play American Football (stupid name since very little of the game is about using your feet with the ball but at least its more interesting to watch than baseball).
My second sentence noted that the bar was full of people and everyone was wearing a Sounders FC jersey or shirt or had a scarf (team scarves are very common in the European football clubs, particularly England where scarves are particularly apropos given the weather. The Seattle Sounders continued that tradition since their inagural season last year).
I think the massive display of Rave Green and Capital Blue (Seattle Sounders colors) is fantastic because in other parts of our country soccer is basically ignored (which is very sad). Seattle Sounders fans are the best and I’m happy to be one of them.”
I never would have texted that from my phone’s tiny keyboard and it would have taken like 20-30 tweets to write it all anyway. Heck, this is long enough to be a blog post (see /blog/) at this point.
The comment earned me another comment, “LMAO Rob!!” which made me smile. But it was the last sentence that stuck in my head. It’s a thought I’ve had for a long time and subconsciously voiced it on the social network I never use.
My blog is the core of my online presence. It is here that I discuss my thoughts and opinions in detail. Twitter is an obvious extension of my online presence that captures a moment in time or redistributes content from my blog. Facebook simply redistributes Twitter content to reach Facebook friends who are not Twitter followers.
In the future I would like this site, http://robmensching.com, to be the single core of my online presence. Then I could treat Twitter the way I treat Facebook, a redistribution network. I like the idea of owning my content.
Fortunately, I wrote all the software running the site here so I can actually achieve that goal. I just need to find the time between my RobMensching.com LLC contracts, WiX Toolset leadership duties plus all that stuff I do at Microsoft I can’t talk about right now. <smile/>
In the meantime, keep coding… you know I am!