I believe we are seeing a change to Facebook that I am going to call, Twitterization. The purpose of this note is to describe it, and what I’m doing personally about this Twitterization. At least from my perspective, or how this touches me, it is a change being caused or exploited by activists. They have the best of intentions- to network and be well connected, since good activism requires a good and far reaching network. I suppose some of the blame can be dumped on Facebook itself, as a number of the features lend themselves to this Twitterization. But I don’t really care who started it, or who/what is to blame. I’m more interested in expressing what I am doing in the face(book) of it.

What do I mean by the Twitterization of Facebook? Let me explain. Twitter is a social media tool that allows people to follow others. People post Tweets, that often contain links to longer data sources like blog posts. Anyone who is following that person sees everything that that person Tweets. A person can choose to follow and later unfollow anyone that want without the person being followed having to do anything at all. I follow a ton of folks who I don’t know personally but who I’m getting to know, and/or I’m gaining information from their postings. Twitter is searchable too. So if I want to follow someone who is into Abortion Rights (or opposed to it) I can easily do that. I can also send direct messages to others, and have conversations with them to get to know them better, and develop friendships as well as my social or activist networks. Twitter is a activists dream application! Or, platform, to be more accurate.

On the other hand, Facebook is a network of friends. Being someone’s friend on Facebook requires requesting to be added as a friend, and then the person accepting the request. Facebook is also a location for plenty of personal information. For example, my friends can see my cell phone number or the name of my partner (as well as a link to his profile). Facebook was intended for real people to have profiles and connect to their friends, and be a virtual space for conversing and sharing.

To recap: Twitter= follow anyone, Facebook= connect to friends. There are reasons why a person may want to friend someone on Facebook other than knowing the person directly, but that is most likely a discussion for another post.

Recently, I’ve been receiving more and more friend requests from folks I have never heard of, and know absolutely nothing about. Many of these come from folks who are possibly activists, but most often, there is no way to really know because no information about them is actually visible to anyone other than their friends. But often, these folks have dozens or more friends in common with me, and all of the friends in common are activists. I used to just accept most all friend requests, until I realized that this wasn’t useful to me in any way. I then, began to send a message to anyone I didn’t know, asking if we had met or why they wanted to be my friend. Most often, I would receive no reply at all. While it doesn’t take a lot of time to friend someone, it it another task- managing my Facebook- and I don’t need any more tasks.

I’ve decided that many folks are using Facebook as if it were Twitter, as a tool to know what someone else is doing posting or communicating about. Hey, I thought, all of these friend requests from people I don’t know- they are folks who could easily follow me on Twitter without me having to do anything! Maybe, these are folks who just want a ton of friends. They don’t really care who the friends are- it is the number of friends that matters to them. Or, they are folks who are kidding themselves, and think by simply having a lot of friends they are being successful activists. Or, maybe they aren’t even real people at all?

Additionally, Facebook, launched a new “groups” feature that allows a person to create a group, and add you to their group. Once you are in a group, you get a ton of stuff on your wall from the group, and if you don’t want it, then you have to do stuff to keep it off of your wall. Not very cool if you ask me.  Twitter allows for groups too! And a person can create a group, and add other Twitter members to the group, and the Twitter member  is totally unaffected! Much more courteous and friendly!  Activists are creating groups like there is no tomorrow! (I was going to say, “right and left” but I don’t know if conservative groups are being created at the phenomenal rate as LGBT/progressive groups. And so rather than a Facebook group becoming a space for lots of good stuff, there are 10 groups with the same stuff posted to all 10 groups!  A real waste. Last eek, I saw an activist, I have a ton of respect for, create a new group, and ask that it be a place where everything gets posted. As if the three other groups we are both members of, weren’t enough to begin with? It is a frenzy to create connections and share information, which in and of itself is a good thing in concept, but not playing out too well in a practical sense.

So, I’m putting my foot down, and limiting my Facebook to real friends and some other folks. New friend requests are met with a message that suggests that these folks follow me on Twitter, and I can follow them too. If what I or they post makes it seem like it would be useful to be Facebook friends, we can cross that bridge at that time.

Let’s let Facebook be what it is, and let Twitter be what it is, and stop choosing a hammer when what we need is a screwdriver.