I'll start with Facebook - after all it's the most popular of the two. Everybody signed up, and why? Because everybody else was doing it. I stopped using Facebook about six weeks ago now (something I never thought I could do) and life is much more enjoyable.
Sure, it's great to be updated with videos of your cousin's first steps, but most users forget who they're sharing with. Remember your friend's colleague you met that one time? Her grandmother's "cat has just shat on the carpet." Don't get me wrong, I love sharing continuous useless information about my life - but that's why I have a Twitter account. Those who don't want to know can easily click "unfollow" and nobody gets judged. The problem with Facebook, however, is that removing somebody as a friend isn't generally acceptable. In fact it's damn right offensive! After four years of heavy usage I found myself at a brick wall. The same people I dislike posting statuses about the old woman on the bus every Tuesday, the same Mafia Wars invitations eight times a week, the same five people talking about Eastenders. Thanks for everything Mark, but I think I'm done.
I made the switch to Twitter for one main reason: change.
Change is great, and it's one of Twitter's long list of talents. My Twitter timeline is infinitely more fluid than my Facebook timeline once was. People, places, articles, photos and everything else fly past and for twenty minutes on my lunch break I'm completely indulged. Twitter's content lives in the present; if you blink, it's gone. I follow users because he or she posts interesting articles, anecdotes, great photos or simply because I enjoy reading about their cat's toilet habits. The point is, I have complete freedom in what I see and it never gets boring.
This article is one I remember reading a year or two ago when I signed up to Twitter, and we all see the same happening everyday. The article is about how Twitter was the first to break the news of the Hudson River plane crash in 2009. A passenger tweeted a photo of the plane right from the river within minutes - who'd want to wait a half hour for CNN coverage?
I find myself consuming so much new content without even realising. When a friend asks "Where did you hear that?", my answer is almost definitely "Erm...I read it on Twitter." I rarely read a newspaper or watch the nightly BBC News any more as the news is old news. A reporter will report a story as soon as enough information has been gathered but it's already too late. No doubt tweets from the front line will have appeared before Trevor McDonald can say "Breaking News".
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