ff vs. twitter

I made the decision about a year ago to export myself to friendfeed and close up shop in twitter. I find myself lingering on the edges there (in twitter) though, and it makes me feel bad. I don't want it to be a contest, but it is. I don't have that much attention, and it can't keep getting split up like this. I know that friendfeed and twitter are not the same thing, and could live together, but I don't think they should (really). Friendfeed allows users to post anything, and other users can comment on those posts (like @ replies). So where is twitter providing something that friendfeed does not?

This reminds me of the TMBG song XTC vs. Adam Ant

There is no clear decision to be made, cause I love them both. Twitter to me is like all of the fiction I read as a child that enabled me to read better fiction as an adult. I still love the books I read as a child, but I understand why what i am reading now is better.



I think a 'friend' circle VENN diagram would be more illustrative, but that gets complex very quickly. I have 109 'friends' in friendfeed and 126 'friends' on twitter. There is a large degree of overlap there, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Some of those ffeeps only have a nominal presence in friendfeed and still do all of their social network microblogging in Twitter.

As I can attest the reverse can be true as well. I have been using friendfeed for about 98% of my posts in the last year. I typically only surface in twitterland if I'm feeling out of sorts on friendfeed, or if I get a new subscription request. My posts consist of 'OHAI!, I still live here', rather than much substance.

There is a very small subset that manages to maintain a presence in both places, I think I might take some time to watch what they post where for awhile to gain some understanding about why you would want to do this. Preliminary research shows a casual posting on twitter, with more substantive conversation construction on friendfeed.

I am contemplating sending a post to anyone who subscribes to me on twitter, suggesting they just start using friendfeed instead, but I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from using Twitter, just in case that is what works for them. I think that regardless of whether you are on twitter or on friendfeed you will quickly wonder what the point of it all is if you have no friends. establishing that base quickly could mean the difference between a shrug of disinterest and never coming back or fully embracing the technology.

I was dismissive with twitter several years ago, and luckily gave it another try and found what it had to offer me at the time. I have moved on, but I owe twitter a debt of gratitude for getting me here.