If London is the capital of Twitter, where does everyone go when Twitter is down?
So used am I to Twitter and Tweetdeck that I suddenly found myself trying to use Facebook like Twitter. Instead of replying to the comments on my Facebooks status update that I was suddenly back in Facebook after a long time away – I found myself wanting to create more status updates and @reply individuals. Not possible.
I then tried Friendfeed. In theory everyone I subscribe to on Twitter is there because I loaded the people I follow into the site a while back – but the place was oddly quiet apart from a few from a few geeks I’d expect to find there. I also found I could recognise almost no-one on Friendfeed in the way that I can routinely recognise people I follow on Twitter – even people I don;t interact with that mush. The mashing up of Flickr friends, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail contacts has turned it into a mess and actually quite unusable for the main reason I use Twitter – which is to communicate in public about stuff I’m thinking about or working on.
In other words FriendFeed is now a vessel for Twitter to be poured into. If anything Facebook retains its status as a real-time platform, as least from this user’s perspective. I certainly had more response from my Facebook friends to the news of Twitter’s Failwhale that on Friendfeed, but then it’s a better known platform in London.
And another thing – I suddenly miss short URLs! Who knew I’d miss that!?
On thing about Facebook though – reading realtime status updates is hard with the current design they have. Friendfeed’s design is cleaner. But give me back my Twitter!