danah blog wrote an awesome blog posting today:
Check it out here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/10/25/some_thoughts_o_2.html
Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates
The functional act of constructing a tweet or a status update is very similar. Produce text in roughly 140 characters or less inside a single line text box and click a button. Voila! Even the stream based ways in which the text gets consumed look awfully similar. Yet, the more I talk with people engaged in practices around Twitter and Facebook, the more I'm convinced these two things are not actually the same practice. Why? Audience.
There are two critical structural differences between Facebook and Twitter that are essential to understand before discussing the practices: 1) social graph directionality; 2) conversational mechanisms.
Facebook's social graph is undirected. What this means is that if I want to be Friends with you on Facebook, you have to agree that we are indeed Friends. Reciprocity is an essential cultural practice in Facebook (although they are trying to rip out the functional requirement as it relates to status updates, arguably to compete with Twitter). Twitter, on the other hand, is fundamentally set up to support directionality. I can follow you without you following me. Sure, I can't DM you in this case, but I'm still consuming your updates. Yes, yes, yes, privacy settings complicate both of these statements. But for the majority of users of each site, this is the way it goes. Stemming from this are a whole lot of social norms about who's following who and who's consuming who's content. It's pretty clear that the Celebrity will get followed without reciprocating on Twitter, but there's also a tremendous opportunity for everyday individuals to develop a following. It's not just the Celebrities who are following different people than the people who follow them; it's nearly everyone (except for those who think that auto-follow bots relieve social tensions).
On Facebook, status updates are placed on one's Wall. This allows anyone else (among those with permission) to comment on the update. This creates a conversational space as it is quite common for people to leave comments on updates. Conversely, on Twitter, to reply to someone's tweet, one produces an at-reply on their own stream. Sure, the interlocutor can read it in their stream of at-replies, but it doesn't actually get seen or produced on their own page. Thus, a person's Twitter page is truly the product of their self-representation, not the amalgamation of them and their cohort.
So, practices.. how does this affect practices?
Those using Facebook are primarily concerned with connecting with those that they know (or knew in high school). The status updates are an invitation to conversation, a way of maintaining social peripheral awareness among friends and acquaintances. They're about revealing life as it happens so as to be part of a "keeping up" community.
Arguably, Twitter began this way, if only because the geeks and bloggers who were among the early adopters were a socially cohesive group. Yet, as the site has matured, the practices have changed (and I've watched a whole lot of early adopters who weren't part of the professional cohort leave). For the most visible, Twitter is a way of producing identity in a public setting. This is where you see personal branding as central to the identity production going on there. It's still about living in public, but these folks are aware of being seen, of having an audience if you will. Twitter also enables a modern incarnation of parasocial relations. Sure, there are one-sided relationships on Facebook too, but they are far more the norm on Twitter. I can follow the details of a Celebrity's life without them ever knowing I exist. At the same time, there's the remote possibility of them responding which is what complicates traditional parasocial constructs. Angelina Jolie could never see me reading about her in the gossip mags and commenting on her latest escapades, but, if she were on Twitter, she could sense my watching her and see my discussion of her. That's part of what is so delightfully tempting for Celebs.
In short, the difference between the two has to do with the brokering of status. With Facebook, the dominant norm is about people at a similar level of status interacting. On Twitter, there's all sorts of complicated ways in which status is brokered. People are following others that they respect or worship and there's a kind of fandom at all levels. This is what Terri Senft has long called "micro-celebrity." Alice Marwick has been extending Terri's ideas to think about how audience is brokered on Twitter (paper coming soon). But I think that they're really critical. What makes Twitter work differently than Facebook has to do with the ways in which people can navigate status and power, follow people who don't follow them, at-reply strangers and begin conversations that are fundamentally about two individuals owning their outreach as part of who they are. It's not about entering another's more private sphere (e.g., their Facebook profile). It's about speaking in public with a targeted audience explicitly stated.
As you can see, I'm not quite there with my words on this just yet, but I feel the need to push back against the tendency to collapse both practices into one. How audience and status is brokered really matters and differentiates these two sites and the way people see and navigate this.
One way to really see this is when people on Twitter auto-update their Facebook (guilty as charged). The experiences and feedback on Twitter feel very different than the experiences and feedback on Facebook. On Twitter, I feel like I'm part of an ocean of people, catching certain waves and creating my own. Things whirl past and I add stuff to the mix. When I post the same messages to Facebook, I'm consistently shocked by the people who take the time to leave comments about them, to favorite them, to ask questions in response, to start a conversation. (Note: I'm terrible about using social media for conversation and so I'm a terrible respondent on Facebook.) Many of the people following me are the same, but the entire experience is different.
Over the last few years, I've watched a bunch of self-sorting. Folks who started out updating on Twitter and moved to Facebook and vice versa. The voices they take on don't change that much, but they tend to find one medium or the other more appropriate for the kinds of messaging they're doing. One or the other just "fits" better. When I ask them why, they can't really tell me. Sometimes, they talk about people; sometimes they talk about privacy issues. But most of the time, one just clicks better for reasons they can't fully articulate.
Different social media spaces have different norms. You may not be able to describe them, but you sure can feel them. Finding the space the clicks with you is often tricky, just as finding a voice in a new setting can be. This is not to say that one space is better than the other. I don't believe that at all. But I do believe that Facebook and Twitter are actually quite culturally distinct and that trying to create features to bridge them won't actually resolve the cultural differences. And boy is it fun to watch these spaces evolve.
Check it out here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/10/25/some_thoughts_o_2.html
On a cold miserable day in Ottawa, a few hundred (maybe?) people, mainly youth, showed up on Parliament Hill for 2 hours for 350.org's International Day of Action. With various mascots running around asking us to sign petitions, protesters carrying signs and figures such as Elizabeth May, Oxfam and the WWF speaking, it was definitely a public event. Asking anyone with a Twitter-enabled phone to tweet messages to @pmharper and issuing the number of his office to promote a "phone jam" (similar to the Global WakeUp Call, I imagine?), social media was definitely a major part of this campaign.
Participants have been asked to contribute photos and videos to Flickr and YouTube accounts, follow progress of powershift 09 on twitter, use the hashtag #fillthehill and #powershift09 and use their mobile phones to call elected officials. One thing I am not sure people are aware of is how easy it is to use Twitter on any cell phone through SMS. If one goes through their settings and enters their mobile phone number, twitter then sends users a code to text to the Twitter shortcode 21212. Once this is confirmed, users simply need to send messages to 21212 to have it post on their accounts.
this is a snapshot of my Twitter account (http://twitter.com/maggiemacaulay) where I decided to tweet observations instead of writing down field notes. It was an interesting experience.
Pros:
-providing a livestream of information
- using hashtags helped aggregate posts so that #fillthehill may have received higher ranking on trending topics (although I am not sure something as local as "fill the hill" would have hit on a global scale. Maybe it would have been better for each 350 group to just adopt one hashtag? Power of crowds might have helped.
-helped me see what its like for activists to communicate via twitter
-gets you pretty excited about taking notes
-rapid pace forsure leads to excitement
-chance to participate in newer forms of action
-tweeting enables my audience to also understand the demonstration (aka my supervisor knows that I was actually outside collecting observations and not at home eating bon bons and watching Steel Magnolias, which is what my inner self was totally doing)
-phoning the PM and actually getting through was pretty fun. Although we probably just pissed people off wanting to phone the PM for other reasons. And because he has a secretary, it probably didn't make her day great either.
Cons:
-I have a crappy cell phone and can barely use T9 so my texts were a bit frustrating and sometimes I didn't know how to do it "right"
-It was raining and I was nervous that my cellphone would get wet (umbrellas are not conducive to texting unless you have one of those head umbrellas)
-There was no WiFi on Parliament Hill (eugh) and if it wasn't for my dear friend L.T and her Blackberry, I'd have no web access at all to setup my Twitterphone. Thats another thing. If you don't have a smart phone, things are a heck of a lot more annoying and slow.
-Because I have no interwebs I couldn't see what was going on in the blogosphere during this whole thing. So no instant feedback. Lame.
So it was a neat experience. Although I don't have a smartphone for my conference (thus requiring me to switch between cameras, voice recorders, cell phones and my ipod....maybe I need a nerdy toolbelt. Or one of my old aprons from waitressing), I am really lucky that I am getting a relatively cheap cell phone in Copenhagen that will allow me to send SMS and talk without those horrendous roaming charges. Add to that that the Bella Centre (site of COP15) is definitely WiFi enabled and I'm good.
I actually missed the live flash mob but did see it on the news after. To be honest I think the turnout was a bit disappointing but media reports did make it seem bigger than it was. Is that good because people pay attention or do they figure that enough people "took care of it"? I'm not sure.
Youth definitely were the biggest group there- decked out in costumes, running around with petitions, marching with signs. I saw a few clusters of older people- likely Sierra Club members. People ages 25+ where you at? Let's call Ottawa "Notottawa". Yeah yeah I know it was raining, blah blah blah. But still. Isn't this the capital? Ben ouais.
I think it's a good start. I remember reading about the global day of action March 25 that didn't seem to garner much press. The Global WakeUp Call on September 21st? I only heard about it in retrospect on rabble and the CBC. "What do you mean you've never heard of Aavez?" I've been asked. TMI people. It's tough to keep up on everything all of the time. Between writing my thesis, stalking my exboyfriends and their new girlfriends on facebook, watching Real Housewives of New York City and going to step aerobics it's hard to keep up. OK ramble over. Back to thesis proposal.
ps. H.T merci for the lentil goodness. You inspire me to cook with white wine instead of drinking it. Or both. I will deliver your gift to your gros toutou soon.
Participants have been asked to contribute photos and videos to Flickr and YouTube accounts, follow progress of powershift 09 on twitter, use the hashtag #fillthehill and #powershift09 and use their mobile phones to call elected officials. One thing I am not sure people are aware of is how easy it is to use Twitter on any cell phone through SMS. If one goes through their settings and enters their mobile phone number, twitter then sends users a code to text to the Twitter shortcode 21212. Once this is confirmed, users simply need to send messages to 21212 to have it post on their accounts.
Pros:
-providing a livestream of information
- using hashtags helped aggregate posts so that #fillthehill may have received higher ranking on trending topics (although I am not sure something as local as "fill the hill" would have hit on a global scale. Maybe it would have been better for each 350 group to just adopt one hashtag? Power of crowds might have helped.
-helped me see what its like for activists to communicate via twitter
-gets you pretty excited about taking notes
-rapid pace forsure leads to excitement
-chance to participate in newer forms of action
-tweeting enables my audience to also understand the demonstration (aka my supervisor knows that I was actually outside collecting observations and not at home eating bon bons and watching Steel Magnolias, which is what my inner self was totally doing)
-phoning the PM and actually getting through was pretty fun. Although we probably just pissed people off wanting to phone the PM for other reasons. And because he has a secretary, it probably didn't make her day great either.
Cons:
-I have a crappy cell phone and can barely use T9 so my texts were a bit frustrating and sometimes I didn't know how to do it "right"
-It was raining and I was nervous that my cellphone would get wet (umbrellas are not conducive to texting unless you have one of those head umbrellas)
-There was no WiFi on Parliament Hill (eugh) and if it wasn't for my dear friend L.T and her Blackberry, I'd have no web access at all to setup my Twitterphone. Thats another thing. If you don't have a smart phone, things are a heck of a lot more annoying and slow.
-Because I have no interwebs I couldn't see what was going on in the blogosphere during this whole thing. So no instant feedback. Lame.
So it was a neat experience. Although I don't have a smartphone for my conference (thus requiring me to switch between cameras, voice recorders, cell phones and my ipod....maybe I need a nerdy toolbelt. Or one of my old aprons from waitressing), I am really lucky that I am getting a relatively cheap cell phone in Copenhagen that will allow me to send SMS and talk without those horrendous roaming charges. Add to that that the Bella Centre (site of COP15) is definitely WiFi enabled and I'm good.
I actually missed the live flash mob but did see it on the news after. To be honest I think the turnout was a bit disappointing but media reports did make it seem bigger than it was. Is that good because people pay attention or do they figure that enough people "took care of it"? I'm not sure.
Youth definitely were the biggest group there- decked out in costumes, running around with petitions, marching with signs. I saw a few clusters of older people- likely Sierra Club members. People ages 25+ where you at? Let's call Ottawa "Notottawa". Yeah yeah I know it was raining, blah blah blah. But still. Isn't this the capital? Ben ouais.
I think it's a good start. I remember reading about the global day of action March 25 that didn't seem to garner much press. The Global WakeUp Call on September 21st? I only heard about it in retrospect on rabble and the CBC. "What do you mean you've never heard of Aavez?" I've been asked. TMI people. It's tough to keep up on everything all of the time. Between writing my thesis, stalking my exboyfriends and their new girlfriends on facebook, watching Real Housewives of New York City and going to step aerobics it's hard to keep up. OK ramble over. Back to thesis proposal.
ps. H.T merci for the lentil goodness. You inspire me to cook with white wine instead of drinking it. Or both. I will deliver your gift to your gros toutou soon.
Today is the first day of PowerShift '09, Canada's weekend-long event for the 350.org international day of action. I trekked all the way from Montreal to Carleton to the Nepean Sportsplex to watch the rehearsal for the "Fill the Hill" flash mob dance occurring on Ottawa's Parliament Hill, tomorrow October 24, 2009.
I thought it was all a bit weird- the YouTube video instructing participants on the dance moves, the fact that a flash mob (which is technically defined by its use of mobile technologies and its spontenaeity) is rehearsed. In person.
Ok, so maybe it doesn't fit into the Rheingoldian notion of "smart mobs". But it helps address another issue in activism. The fact that many movements lack that collective identity that makes a group cohesive. After all, it's unlike the civil rights movement, the women's movement and the queer movement in that there is no "we" definining the movement.
What I realized is that these activities not only add enthusiasm and motivate people but also foster relationship-building, collaboration and a team spirit. People are bonded by this event and may form long-lasting friendships based on these loose tie connections.
Here they find people who are also interested in the environment, have a sense of humour and like to participate in public actions. Awesome. Will post a video of rehearsal after. Shows how groups need to work together as one unit.
I thought it was all a bit weird- the YouTube video instructing participants on the dance moves, the fact that a flash mob (which is technically defined by its use of mobile technologies and its spontenaeity) is rehearsed. In person.
Ok, so maybe it doesn't fit into the Rheingoldian notion of "smart mobs". But it helps address another issue in activism. The fact that many movements lack that collective identity that makes a group cohesive. After all, it's unlike the civil rights movement, the women's movement and the queer movement in that there is no "we" definining the movement.
What I realized is that these activities not only add enthusiasm and motivate people but also foster relationship-building, collaboration and a team spirit. People are bonded by this event and may form long-lasting friendships based on these loose tie connections.
Here they find people who are also interested in the environment, have a sense of humour and like to participate in public actions. Awesome. Will post a video of rehearsal after. Shows how groups need to work together as one unit.
Labels:
350.org,
day of action,
fill the hill,
flash mob,
ottawa,
powershift '09,
youtube
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An article I read here talks about how researchers are using the "right here right now" aspect of cell phones to collect sensitive data from patients. Right on.
Going to Ottawa this weekend for 350.org Day of Climate Change Action. Excited to see what happens
Going to Ottawa this weekend for 350.org Day of Climate Change Action. Excited to see what happens
