In the past few weeks I tried something new and this is how it all ended:

Few weeks back when I stumbled across Ping.fm I started doing something what I never done before…and that is updating my status on Facebook. Hell, it was the only reason I started using Ping.fm.

Until then I was happy with my Twitter account for mini blogging, but as all other things in life, Twitter had a downside as well. The downside for me was that no friends of mine use twitter :( !
All of them are on Facebook and they are using it as it is the only social networking service in the world.
So naturally as I wanted, and still want to, keep in touch with my friends and their activities I had to use Facebook as well, but I never had a “live” connection with them there. And when Ping.fm came along I could finally share my tweets with them in real time as simple as it was with Twitter.

However once I started posting my statuses to two services at once mini blogging got so much difficult, and once again Facebook reminded me why I don’t like it and was the one to blame for ruining my joy for something I loved.

I wont get here into details why I think Facebook status updates and Facebook chat can’t be as good as Twitter updates and normal IM applications, or how people who use facebook forgot why Facebook was created in the first place (and no it is not to be more popular for uploading photos than Flicker :D ) and started using it totally wrong. But the truth is that Facebook with its complexity is killing the simplicity of some other services and that this is only happening because some people can’t leave their old habits and go try doing something new (and yes I’m referring here to Facebook directly).

For example: I post an update and then people decide to comment it (that is great, really), but then you have to log to Facebook to reply to that comment. That’s totaly a time saver, ufff!
The same thing happens when you want to follow activities from one of your friends…I mean you must log in to see what your friend is doing…and when you log in you need to search for his updates or open his profile to see them. Again minutes wasted for nothing…it’s quicker and easier to call him and ask him what he is doing :). And these things go in circle all day long.

As Twitter is meant to be used with desktop applications and IM applications you just don’t waste so much time to find out what your friends are doing. Especially when all updates come to you as they happen.

People also complain and think I’m full of my self because I post updates in English. What’s the problem with that? I mean I have a public twitter account for a reason and I want everyone to see it and let them follow me if they choose so. I also don’t have time and the will to translate and then post the same updates twice only for Facebook users.

I had a situation when I commented on a product (Fusion for mac) over Twitter and within minutes I received a response from them with a couple of solutions for my problem (That is called a great service where you don’t expect it. I received my answer faster than people who call them directly). And what do you think would they see and understand my issue if it was in Croatian? Plus I have some people on my friends lists that are not speaking Croatian, so I need to think about them as well.
So I think that it benefits me more if I’m more accessible to the world (that is also the main idea behind all these social networking services) and that I can gain more from the world when I write in English than everybody else can lose when they are trying to translate what I say. What do you think? I hope someone out there sees my point here!

So what I realized after some time is when I’m using Ping.fm to post updates to Facebook that it is not fun to post something in one way only. I mean I don’t really use facebook (like opening it in a browser) so I don’t see what others are doing. I also can’t quickly interact with my friends this way…So what is the point? I guess that there isn’t any. So I decided I will stop posting updates to Facebook, and try to make Twitter more “cool” in my small part of the world. Hopefully when I get few people addicted to it more will come on their own :)

And to end everything in a positive tone…I don’t think facebook is all bad, there are most certainly some great things about it and that is why I will use it for a long time (casually :D) , but I don’t think that the things they are pushing now in Facebook, the things I tried pushing with Ping.fm and the things most of my friends use mostly, are those great things.

If you think you can prove me wrong about all this please use the comments below.

Stay cool!

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