I recently got a message from a friend who was wondering why I wasn’t responding to them and was wondering if I was mad at them for some reason, which came as a total shock to me. They kept sending me messages on Facebook, but I am rarely on Facebook. Here’s what happened:
I have two different but overlapping group of friends- some on Facebook, some on Twitter. My Facebook friends are both social media types, and friends reconnecting from high school, college and all over. Twitter tends to be more social media friends, business partners and the like, and a minority are old friends from childhood.
I set up Facebook so it captures and posts my tweets to Facebook, without my ever having to be on Facebook- very convenient, but very confusing, since the language on Twitter, due to the 140 character limit, tends to look more like text messaging than real english from time to time. My real life friends then are seeing more of the social media side of my life (just fine) but don’t understand some of it, especially as a tweet looks like “@chelpixie- turns out Amy is going to be fine. Thanks!”
That looks like an intriguing message to Facebook friends who have no idea that 1) Amy is our silly Golden Doodle; 2) she was in an accident but is having surgery and will be fine and 3) my friend Michelle was worried about how she was doing, having had long “discussions” with our silly dog when she came to stay recently.
So I’ve found that while sending my Tweets to Facebook can generate all sorts of conversations with my real world friends, they are generally confused to the strange language I use, the half sentences, inside baseball, and lack of follow-up from me, since they never see the other side of the conversation going on through Twitter.
I haven’t yet decided whether this means I can simply educate my Facebook friends about Twitter so they understand what’s going on; whether I should break the Twitter feed to Facebook, or whether I just have to be more vigilant about checking in on Facebook more regularly.
In the meantime, if you really want to talk to me, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at LDpodcast@gmail.com, or feel free to use that telephone- I’m always happy to hear from you- and there’s a better chance of getting my attention than trying to send me a message through facebook, as friendly and nice as that can be.