The current fad of linking Twitter to the comment page of Facebook has now officially reached the ridiculous phase. My Facebook page is replete with the inanity, irrelevance, and non-sequitors that characterize Tweets, blocking out (unless I care to scroll scroll scroll) comments from friends that are relevant to the friendships I’m trying to cultivate on Facebook.
The irony of this is that the Twits who are spamming Facebook are, of course, my friends, who have assumed – wrongly, sorry – that I come to Facebook to read their Tweets.
All wrong.
Subscription to a Twitter feed should be voluntary. (And to be frank, I have so far not bothered to volunteer.) But if Facebook is to become a Twitter playground, to the detriment of its original goal of facilitating friendship, count me out.
Judging by the reaction by my other friends when I commented about this problem on Facebook, I’m far from the only one. So here’s the fix: Facebook needs to either include an opt in/out feature for Twitter feeds, or face the defection of users who are getting sick of the force feeding of Tweets that is now frankly completely out of control. And getting worse all the time.
End of rant. Except for the Twitter version of this rant, which goes like this (for all those who can’t read all those many words above):
@allyoutwits: stop Tweeting on Facebook. Now. Not Interested. Please.
Okay, having read your post, after your facebook comment, I get it. I guess my facebook friends haven’t crossed over to twitterland, and vice-versa, so I was unaware of this problem which does sound like a reasonable idea gone bad (I’d been thinking of the dilemma of the status update on both fronts – but I’m a low volume, low-responder twitterer). Yeah, if there were a way to turn twitter feeds off, that would solve it. Seems like a reasonable function for facebook to add.
I agree the FB user needs some way to filter out messages delivered via twitter but as a frequent (albeit automated) twitterer it’s hard to know where to draw the line.
We tweet like mad, announcing what songs we’re playing, whos on next, competitions etc etc and make use of all the tools we can to mirror these messages on FB, Myspace and anywhere else that will let us.
We assume – perhaps wrongly – that if people subscribe to us, then they are happy to see our every utterance – which can of course become incredibly tedious.
Some people have complained to us and we’ve tried to adjust our messages to make them more interesting or useful but ulitmately, we assume people will simply unsubscribe if it all gets too much.
I got Vinnie on Twitter. You’re next homeboy.
http://www.twitter.com/dealarchitect
This is a tough call. If you are an active social media person, it is tempting to try to be efficient (such as by having tweets posted on fb.) However, consideration of your subscribers I believe should be a higher priority.