The Value Of Twitter And The Crap Of Facebook

I've found myself logging in to the Facebook less and less frequently. First of all, I started logging out of the service, I think, two years ago. I realized that by having my Facebook logged in on one browser tab, the other tabs had access to my Facebook context. This is quite obvious. But with consequences. Any page with a [Like] button was accessing my Facebook context and the big F was able to collect information on where I was going. I did not like that, so logging out has become my habit. Being logged out meant by default less interaction with Facebook in general. And over the months I have realized I really do not miss what is going there.

Because the content I have been exposed to has been of a little interest to me.

Facebook manages weak links. By weak links I mean links with people I do not meet, work with or follow every day. It is a great address book of all my school friends. And friends I met or worked with in the past. Whenever I have a need for a contact, Facebook is the easiest way to find them.

But really, I am not interested in getting live stream of updates from my weak links every day. Nobody is. Even if they pretend to, they are not. Everyday events from your weak links are just noise. Even if you [Like] them, you don't care.

Cutting down the noise is one of my long term priorities. Every day I want to focus on what is important to me. And this means getting just the information I want. Without the noise.

And it turns out Twitter gives me exactly what I want. Because on Twitter I follow people who share the information I am interested in. Not exactly the people I know. Not even my weak links. It is what they say, not who they are. These criteria are of course related. But Twitter is about the content. And I love the value it brings. With Twitter it takes time to build and fine tune a right group of people to follow. But it pays off big. And on Twitter everything is public. So you have access to just about anybody you name. And even more important, you can discover the sources based purely on the content you are looking for. The content that matters to you. The content without noise.