To really tell the story of either of these worlds, one has to consider what “community” really is. Some people confuse community with their surroundings geographically because it is easy to see those events as places found familiar and thus comfortable. Through my experience I have observed little ‘clicks’ emerge in many social situations going all the way back to preschool and church as a very small child. Through the years I noticed how some of these groups arise and fall and the mechanisms involved when an idea is realized and starts to spread throughout the community or as I choose to see it, the network one spreads thought through.
So with the notion where all communities are really networks of thought and ideology, I approach facebook and twitter, ready for anything. This sounds like an experience broadening exercise to bring new horizons to cross.
So, here I am, reading my daily news feed, sorting through the random post looking for that enriching post that sparks my excitement and gets me fired up over something. Most of the time though, on either facebook or twitter the random out weighs the enlightening enriching comment. That being said, once I mastered control over the features needed to block game requests and privacy settings that seem to change daily without notice, a steady stream of news, interesting to me, began to ensue with juicy tidbits on my favorite politician, or cause, or underground activity within the hacking community, leaving me with a feeling of being more informed than the random next guy.
So, is facebook better than twitter or the other way around? For me they are two different avenues that bring the same roads together. The difference, that might make one better than the other is subject to the information (news) you want your reader to provide.
The #tags (hash tags) in twitter, making following a given topic trivial, is only so good, since people from other networks aren’t usually aware of what a #tag is and what they mean, but that appears to be changing.
Facebook, having more features, as suggested before is useful once one does master it’s settings, but just as with the hash tags, the education curve is the key.
As with most things, you are likely to get out of it what you put in.
