Sean McCann

If you signed into your Facebook account in the last few days you should have noticed a popup that asked you to review your privacy settings. Facebook claimed that they “are making some changes to give you more control of your information and help you stay connected”. I’d like to translate this for you. Facebook is trying to trick you into sharing more private information with the public in a desperate move to compete with Twitter.

Twitter has recently signed big deals with companies like Microsoft (Bing) and Google to allow access to the “firehose” of tweets. These companies have already integrated real time tweets into their search results. I feel Facebook doesn’t want to get left behind so they are trying everything they can to trick users into sharing more content with “everybody”. The more users they have sharing their status updates and personal information with the world, the more valuable their product is in terms of “firehose” type deals with other companies.

You are now able to determine who can see each individual post you create on Facebook. In the publisher box you will now notice a drop down that allows you to select who you want to see the content you are about to publish. Always make sure that you double check what option is selected!

Please review your privacy settings and adjust them to what you feel most comfortable.

Facebook Privacy History

Facebook was built with the philosophy that you post information so that only the people around you can see it. The people around you may include friends, family, fellow students or co-workers. In the early days of of social networking people were not comfortable sharing their information with even those people. Facebook came around at the right time and provided a safe and secure way to share private information with only the people you wanted to see it. People trusted Facebook and Facebook made people more open because of this trust.

Twitter was build with the philosophy that anything you post could be seen by anybody in the world. People have used Twitter since the beginning knowing this.

Fundamental Differences Between Facebook and Twitter

In simple terms Facebook is where your real life friends and family are and Twitter is where people of similar interest are.

For most people the majority of your “friends” are simply people that just happened to go to the same school as you, or just happened to play on the your hockey team, or just happened to live across the street. Although you may have a great relationship with these friends, they generally do not share all the same interests as you. Facebook is a great with to keep in touch with these people through photos and status updates.

If you are really into a niche subject areas like “quantum physics” and love sharing content about that subject, Facebook probably isn’t the best place to do so. Mostly likely the high majority of your friends would have no idea what you were posting. Twitter is a great place for these posts because as time goes on people will stumble across your content, see value in it and follow your future updates. Twitter allows you to truly be yourself. If you have an unique interest in posting content about controversial topics such as religion or politics then you don’t have to worry about upsetting friends and family. People of similar opinion will flock to you if you are mostly quality content.

Your Thoughts

What do you think the difference between Facebook and Twitters is? Do you use either or both products? Let’s discuss this in the comments.