In general I’m a fan of convergence, but I’ve recently realised that I use various ‘social’ websites in different ways, and it is appropriate for them to remain distinct.
Take Facebook – it’s the way I keep a connection with friends and family who I don’t see much, but also to mess around with some I do. But it’s all essentially built on mutuality, that is any action I do automatically gets pushed to my friends, whether they like it or not. If I want to see someone’s details, updates, etc, they have to also get mine.
Something like Twitter, on the other hand, is not based on mutuality, and only those people who opt in to my gibberish actually receive it. This is liberating, in one way, as the onus is on them to opt-in to my posts, and I don’t have to gets their tweets if I don’t want to.
Finally of course, there’s this site, which is the ultimate opt-in, in that it doesn’t get pushed to anyone (except Google, I suppose).
So whereas I tried having all my blog posts automatically added as notes to Facebook, and my Tweets added to my Facebook status (and vice versa), I now have come to the conclusion that I use them all in very different ways, and with different ‘audiences’, so I’m keeping them apart.
Now you know!