Twitter vs. Facebook

I was in a meeting the other day and someone was talking about Twitter vs. Facebook.  A person in the meeting said the following:

"Facebook is where I avoid people I've known my whole life.  Twitter is where I fall in love with complete strangers."

Powerful.

In 2009, I joined the Twitterverse for the first time.  I was promptly confused by why anyone in their right mind thought it was better than Facebook.  Here's a screenshot of my first few Tweets:

So, as you can see, I tweeted on 8/27/09 and then was totally inactive for a solid half year before I decided to try again.  I was totally baffled as to why anyone thought Twitter was awesome.

Fast forward to March of 2011 (a solid YEAR later) and I'm at a conference in L.A. for work.  Everyone at the conference was Tweeting and there was a hashtag associated with the conference so people could follow the conversation.  I decided that since I had this membership, I'd go ahead and download the twitter app to my phone.  So there I was, I downloaded the app to my phone and it asks me if I'd like to search my address book for people I knew.  I figured, what the heck?  Why not?!

The app returned a list of results and I quickly followed a bunch of people that I actually know.  That's when things changed for me.  An old coworker of mine was one of the people I chose to follow.  Here's a glimpse into what happened (read from the bottom up):

 

 It turns out in order to find Twitter useful, you need to have followers and actually tweet.  So then the pressure was really on.  My former colleague and current friend has a small country worth of followers and when she says something, people listen.

In my time on Twitter, I have truly come to really enjoy what complete strangers have to say.  I wouldn't say that I'm addicted just yet, but I can definitely see things heading down that path.   So, I guess if you're on Twitter, say hi!