4 Reasons Why Twitter Sucks and Facebook Sucks Just a Little Less
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Just because I work in the Internet marketing industry, doesn’t mean I have to like everything about it. Being a not-so-social person myself–preferring the company just a few people, versus a large group–the idea of joining and participating in an open, global discussion online doesn’t really excite me.
So, before I talk about what sucks about Twitter and Facebook, I’ll talk about what’s good. Twitter and Facebook help you connect with people, especially Facebook. They also provide a public forum for people and companies to provide feedback, both public and private. The accessibility each service provides to friends and customers is unprecedented. However, at least for me, that’s where the good ends.
Twitter is Easy to Spam
Both are susceptible to spam, but Twitter is by far the worst. The open architecture of its messaging and its ability to follow and mention just about anyone, makes it very easy to abuse (and be abused.) Even people you know spam you. Who hasn’t followed back a friend, only to have them send an auto-DM telling you about something you could absolutely care less about. Facebook has issues with spam too, but that usually only happens from using smarmy Facebook apps or accepting friendships from people you don’t really know.
Communication Sucks
Communication and connections are generally more shallow on Twitter. I see two main reasons for that. First, there’s no real personal presence on Twitter. Whereas you have a true profile on Facebook, Twitter only has your most recent tweets. Second, communicating with people with 140 characters or less is incredibly limiting and lame. The only thing it’s done is force people to spell things incorrectly and make text-based communication even more limiting and confusing (in that text based communication is void of intonations.) Facebook let’s you use more characters, and also lets you append photos, videos, and links (separate from the message.)
Lack of Rich Media
Twitter by default is text based. While you can add references to images, videos and more, it has to be included within the 140 character message limit. There are ways around it, like the use of third party software, but Twitter, at its core, does not support attachments, only references. However, Facebook does allow you to not only reference, but also attach rich media. With Facebook, you upload photos, and then have that photo added to an album, and also allow your friends to comment directly on the photo’s permanent page.
Less Real People
Twitter has the ability to quickly ramp up followers and followees that aren’t really people you want to converse with. Twitter also doesn’t have a good “real person” verification process like Facebook. Instead, all they require is a valid email address – not exactly a good way to check if you’re a unique person. Facebook has a much more sophisticated signup and verification process, which helps keep fake friend requests to a bare minimum.
