Linking Twitter and Facebook is a bad idea.
I hate the app that links Twitter and Facebook. At first it seems like a really good idea, I bet. You think you’ll gain followers on Twitter effortlessly while maintaining your Facebook status.
I don’t know about you but I use Facebook to connect with (or should I say spy on?) people who have a direct relationship with me – most are family, friends or acquaintances whom I’ve met in real life at one point or another. On Twitter I have peers, friends and complete strangers following me.
My Facebook status is generally more intimate (ie: how I’m feeling, what I’m up to). It’s something I’d tell a friend on the phone. If I want to share a link, photo or video I use the functionality built in to Facebook and rarely use my status to do so.
In my opinion, tweets should be less personal but more relatable, interesting, and thought-provoking. The purpose of my tweets is to trigger a response: to have others follow me, @reply or RT (re-tweet).
There is also an element of reader anonymity on Twitter. Since I don’t necessarily know all of my followers, posting a tweet is kind of like being my own publicist. I have to be careful not to complain about clients or share too much about what I’m working on out of concern for who might see it.
On Facebook, I know who will see my status and it is intended for that specific audience. I know that the bulk of my Facebook friends would not enjoy 10 reply and re-tweets flooding their news feeds each day.
You get it now, I hope. Different audiences equals different statuses/tweets. And remember – nobody wants your posts showing up in their feed aggregator twice!
yap, I would hate it too.. Twitter is sort of marketing tool and Facebook scoical media site. They are both fine in thier own place. You would not want to mix pepsi and sprite..would you?
Absolutely right. Out of all my FB friends there are about 5 to whom my twitter updates will hold any relevance. I keep them well and truly seperate.
My Twitter/Facebook are currently linked, but I’ve linked and unlinked them many times because of this very issue. I tend to agree with you on the subject, however I’m lazy, and it’s easier to update one status and have the rest of the work done for me.
Also, a lot of my facebook friends don’t use twitter, and yet some of the things I tweet about I would like shared with them, so anyone reading in an rss reader is going to get duplicates anyways.
I also have my Twitter/Facebook linked (as you may have noticed) I’ve found that it actually doesn’t post @replies if you put it as the first thing. I like having it post to Facebook, saves me some time.
If only there was some way to choose which tweets go to Facebook.
I used to have both linked but then I found I got more questions in Facebook about what are all these @’s and #’s. Then I progressed to deleting post in FB after I put them in Twitter. Now they are unlinked. A new development is Tweetdeck’s default is to post to twitter (of course) but also has a checkbox to update your FB account which is perfect for me.