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Facebook vs. Twitter

There’s a problem with the Facebook goes after Twitter debate that no one seems to want to admit. It revolves around human behavior and habits.

For five years, Facebook has conditioned it’s users that the site is “safe”. In Interactive Marketing speak? It’s a walled garden. With that in mind, how many people have uploaded slightly un-PC pictures? How many have their full contact information in their profile? How many of your friends openly posted semi-private life details on your wall? My guess is a lot. I know I have. Why? Because Facebook is “safe”. There’s privacy controls. In fact, their privacy controls can segment “friend” by “friend” what each of your connections can see.

With that said, here’s the problem with all this talk of going public:

  1. Your user base has to reset their privacy controls. Really? You think you’re going to get a large majority of existing users to do this? I don’t think so. Forget the part about all the un-PC pictures, how many people actually know how to do this, let alone are going to? To put this in perspective, how many users have chosen a vanity url? Ummm, that would be less than 5%.
  2. You have to retrain your user base. I don’t know about you, but I like having a “safe” place to share un-PC pictures with a large portion of my friends. I like having status updates that only close friends see. To top it off, most of my friends don’t even save contact information anymore, they just look it up on Facebook. What happens if Facebook takes down the wall? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ll be deleting the photos and contact information. Oh yeah, and I won’t be making any fun status updates any time soon.

Twitter was an “open” network from the beginning. They don’t need to retrain behaviors. Personally, I think it will be a long learning curve for Facebook users.

Posted by Vegasbab on June 28th, 2009 Posted in Interactive Media, Social Media

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