I have been talking with @emapey about the differences between these two social networks and he has suggested me writing a post about this. I am not very sure wether this is going to be useful for somebody or not, as they are just some ideas about how I use facebook and Twitter. I’m not going to give any recipes. This is just my humble opinion, but since he is usually right on his pieces of advice and since it’s been a long time since I last wrote in my blog, I have decided to give it a try. I’m sure you are all familiar with facebook but if you don’t know what twitter is about you may want to have a look at this post: The English Language Teacher’s Guide To Twitter. I take the opportunity to strongly recommend you Karen’s blog. It’s great and full of thorough information.
Well, let’s go to the point: differences between Facebook and Twitter…mmm
1) In Twitter I have professional contacts, people who I have known through the net in general. In Facebook I have my friends. The ones I know face to face. The people with whom I interact socially.
2) For that reason, in facebook I share my pics and things related to my personal life. I post funny links, pages and videos related to art, literature and things in connection with my personal likes. On the other hand, in Twitter I post things related to my profession and to the net itself.
3) In facebook I tend to write long messages and directed to a person in particular ( i.e. I leave messages in people’s walls). In Twitter I write short, impersonal and public messages.
Well, that’s all for today falks. Hope somebody finds this useful. What about you? What do you think about these two social networks? How do you use them?
¡Gracias, saludos!
Hola Jéssica: Muchas gracias por pasarte por aquí. La pintura de Dali es "La muchacha en la Ventana"
Thanks for the interesting activity, Sabrina. We are approaching Avatar from the point of view of va
Sabrina's Weblog 
Interesting. My experience is rather different.
I remember Karyn Romeis telling me this:
“Facebook is the place where all boundaries are blur”.
I’ve been using FB since 2007 when only early adopters where around, so my first 20 friends where edubloggers. Today, the picture is more and more what Karyn described.
I have seldom felt like updating my status inside FB. I use a Twitter app to repost there (can’t even remember how I did that!). But then, FB decided to make everything so twitteresque that except for the “I like” feature -which adds to readers presence- I see thin walls between them.
@fceblog
Thanks Claudia for sharing your experience. I’ve been using facebook for more or less the same time. And you are right at the beginning I only had edubloggers but as time went by facebook became more popular here in Argentina and all my friends started using it. As a result, in a totally unconscious way I have started making this difference I’ve talked about in my post. I have not realised about it till the moment @emapey pointed it out. It was all done naturally without even thinking about it.
From what you’ve said it seems that you don’t like fb much, isn’t it? Do you do something in fb that you don’t do in twitter? or do you use them to share the same type of info?
I prefer Twitter, but I do not dislike FB. All my postings in FB are my Twitter status with few exceptions. I do not change what I share or say. I am same girl on both networks 😉
Main point is there are a lot of people I want to stay in touch with, people who hardly know about Twitter and they are only in FB.
jajajaj Good for you! It’s very difficult to find coherent people these days. Thanks for sharing your experience! You are totally right there are many people who don’t even know what Twitter is all about. Facebook is well-known by almost everybody these days. Lots of kisses Claudia…
Muchísimas gracias Sabrina!!! (demasiaso emocionado para agradecerte en inglés)
Sabrina, thank you very much for your post. I like it!!
You’re welcome Eduardo!
Sabrina and Claudia, I have only a few friends from school and college and a nephew in Facebook.
I have just created a Facebook list with all my virtual friends who I am not following anywhere.
Most of them were my friends in the first network I joined, early in 2007, Explode.us, Eduardo Peirano’s friends. Joel C. Yuvienco, Tomoaki Sawada and Hans Feldmeier are in this list. We use Facebook to stay in touch (birthdays) They are all great people and I still want to stay connected with them!
Pretty much I use both Twitter and Facebook as you do. In the last months I learnt how to take care of my Facebook profile to share personal things only to my friends and family. The reason is that in the begining, early last year, I “enrolled” in my Facebook network professional contacts , usually from the online work environment.
I don’t have so much time to use Facebook which pays more from my attention so I used less often than Twitter.
Thanks Sabrina (and Eduardo) for letting sharing us our thoughts about the two of most popular social networks of present days (even I think it’s better to talk not about differences in the way we use them but about how our inner space counts on using its on a daily / routine basis).
Thank for your comment Gabriela. I don’t understand what you meant by ” how our inner space counts on using it on a daily / routine basis”. Could you clarify it? Thanks a lot. Kisses
That’s my case: every day I experience a different mood with others at work or at home and that has a strong influence on my online activity. There are days when I use Facebook and don’t “touch” Twitter and vice-versa because I have different state-of-emotions that affects my digital activity.
You are totally right Gabriela. I haven’t thought about it in that way! It happens to me that sometimes I use more facebook than twitter and the other way. I think, that in my case, it has to do with the type of activities I’ve been doing on that day.
I don’t let Sabrina stay too many days away from Twitter, though
I’m more like you Sabrina,
In fact the shift to the blurring of the boundaries on Facebook was a bit of a challenge for me – until this year, my FB was really only about my friends and family.
Then, I guess because of my blog (thank you for your lovely comment above by the way), teachers who I didn’t know personally, other edubloggers and others in the industry, began connecting with me there and although this is fun and makes me feel part of a global network of educators – to be honest, now I worry about photographs of me, things which were cool for my friends to see – who’d get the context – but not so comfortable about the world who would not get the context seeing… (I even asked one of my friends to remove one – not that it was a bad photo but it was bad enough that I just wouldn’t want someone downloading it and using it in a few years, it’s not that I don’t trust people in general— dunno).. that sounds paranoid I guess.
I have also noticed that I don’t spend as much time there anymore – and rather than write comments on people’s walls – I tend to write them directly if I think it’s stuff that’s private.
Maybe that sounds bad of me, maybe I should strive for Claudia’s openness but sometimes, I just feel like not having everyone “in the whole world” know that I am meeting up with a friend for a beer… dunno…
Karenne
Well, in the end Eduardo was totally right this topic has generated a lot of talking.
I agree with you Karenne, we have to be careful with the type of information we share online but at the same time it is impossible to have control over everything. I have received some invitations to add some students to my facebook and I have ignored them. I don’t feel confortable with having my students peeking over my personal stuff. However, I know that there are many teachers who accept students and everything goes well for them. What do you think about that?
Hello Sabrina, Gabriela and Eduardo! Nice discussion is formed here 🙂 about usage of social media! It is good to separate the formal and informal interactions, but more important for me are the different forms for connections, communication and information exchange! Hope to stay in touch with you via these social channels!
Hi Malinka! Thanks for sharing your comment. I would love to stay in touch via Twitter. I’m @sabridv, I’m afraid I don’t have you in Twitter. See you there!
Interesting observations thanks for sharing them. I agree Twitter is more of a broadcasting or micro-blogging tool whereas facebook is more personal and private.
I can remove the adverts on facebook with adblockplus but I can’t seem to prevent companies / rogue websites trying to follow me on Twitter. I seem to spend more time pruning dodgy looking followers from my Twitter account than I do making new contacts on facebook.
jjajaja You are right Dean. Is there any way in which you can block those people from following you in Twitter? I don’t know. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Hi Sabrina,
It’s nice to meet you. I’ve just visited your class blog and loved it very much. I liked your ideas, your eercises and the way you speak to your students. I’m a new blogger and I think blogging and twitter is a great opportunity for all of us. I also prepared our school bog http://englishatesayan.edublogs.org/Thhere will soon be the primary and I hope we can exchange ideas.
Eva
Hi Eva,
Thank you for your nice comment. I loved your blog, especially the post about the clock. I felt very identified. It would be great to exchange ideas. See you in twitter!
My online worlds have melded together and I now have both students and online friends in Facebook.
I started with a ‘No Students as Friends’ rule then switched and am now questioning that again. See my thoughts on:
http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/facing-facebook/
and
http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/facebook-revisited/
The comments on this second post have me changing my mind again.
I think the lines are being blurred by many and the key thing is that we have to make our own decisions and we need to be professional in how we connect with everyone online… obviously more to discuss, and so I really enjoyed reading how you define the two differently.
For me Twitter is a professional learning space and Facebook is a digital place I tolerate to connect to those that don’t have much else digitally.
Dear David, Thanks for your comment. I’ve been thinking a lot lately on whether to accept students in facebook or not and i have finally settled on the second option. I have read the posts about the topic in your blog and I agree with one of the comments which said more or less: what does accepting students as friends in FB add to the process of education? Maybe, i’ll change my mind in the future. I know lots of teachers who have students in their Fbs and have had no problems. @gsellart is one of them.
Sabri, leí el post gracias a Eduardo, no recuerdo si lo leí o no con anterioridad, pero lo bueno es que por ahora está aquí para retomarlo.
Le comentaba a Eduardo que estoy repensando mi presencia online y mi uso de las redes sociales, en particular de FB y de nuestro querido Twitter.
En estos momentos me encuentro reorganizando mi círculo de amistades online, dejo a FB para los verdaderos amigos, familiares y aquellas personas que la red me permitió conocer, entre ellos a vos!
Coincido en mucho con tus palabras, para mí significó un proceso de uso y análisis que varía conforme evolucionan las aplicaciones y mis miradas sobre las mismas.
Cariños,
Nancy:
Me alegro mucho que te haya resultado útil. Bien por Eduardo que esta siempre atento. A mi me encantaria poder atenerme a mis “reglas”, pero cada vez se me hace más difícil. Siento que Facebook se me lleno de personas a las cuales no conozco tanto y que preferiria no tenerlas en mi red, pero a la vez se que si las elimino o no las acepto, no lo tomarian a bien, dado que no entenderian pq quiero reducir al minimo mis contactos de facebook. Que problema! Por ahora las sigo manteniendo, de hecho hubo un momento en que intente empezar a eliminar gente y al poco tiempo esas mismas personas me volvieron a agregar como amigo. Ya desisti de intentarlo! Espero que vos tengas mas suerte! jajaj
hello Sabrina,
I’d like to say thank you for including me in the Blog Carnival and I can see you’ve invested a lot of time in compiling all those wonderful resources!! I’ve recommend your article in my FB:-) Thanks for the hard work!
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