Here we are again. If you tried to check in here earlier, you might have gotten a page full of wing-dings. The digital devils attacked just before 7 am this morning, causing me to stop and wait for the geek squad to get it fixed back. I don’t know what happened. This kind of stuff is beyond me.
It’s been about five weeks now since I opened my Facebook account and I thought that I would make a comparison between Facebook and Twitter from my viewpoint. Everybody has their own reasons for signing up with either of these sites, so I won’t bother with that part of it. Instead, I’ll just pass along my impressions of how they are working.
To begin with, Facebook is the older and better-built site. Twitter is going through some growing pains and it shows on their pages as their computer slows down or quits occasionally. Sometimes on Twitter I will click on one of my sidebar links to check on direct messages or something similar, and it just won’t work. Nothing. After a while it usually starts working again. I think the service is growing faster than they are able to upgrade their computers to handle it all. But I have noticed lately that they are not suffering any major total-outages like they were when I first signed up over a year ago.
In my five weeks with Facebook, I haven’t observed any server problems at all. They are definitely a lot more stable. Also, by their very nature and purpose, Facebook has a lot more variety to it. As a traditional “social network,” they have the ability to offer a lot more interaction between the members. You can drop a comment directly on somebody’s posting, for example. Or you can place a group of images in an “album” that friends can choose to view if they wish.
Twitter, on the other hand, does not permit a direct comment to a posting. And Twitter has this unique policy of only permitting up to 140 characters in each individual posting. I have never read why they chose to set it up that way, but it has the effect of keeping it away from any personal ramblings and more towards a direct feed for passing along information via links. Twitter also has evolved into a timely disseminator of instant information. For that, it works well because you can read anybody’s postings if they’ve been “tagged” and you enter the tag in the search box.
They are two different animals with two different missions. But Facebook is the more stable and better-run site, in my opinion.
We’re running late this morning because of our server problems, so let’s get this equipment checked out now and I’ll go make sure there’s plenty of coffee.
