Before I kick off with my first Cloud Ideas post (I’m working on several and will just choose one impsulsively when their done) I’d like to share one little train of tought with you. This is for you if you are tech-savvy, are addicted to Twittering and FriendFeeding and using more regular social networks like Facebook or Hyves if you’re in The Netherlands.
If you’re like me, you Twitter a lot. Especially while on an internet or web conference, building the next cool web application or just discussing trending technology. If you’ve connected Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook, your personal “normal” friends will probably hate you. They’ll have their whole timeline spammed with your - for them – uninterestingly geeky stuff.
My friends did anyways.
My Twitter usage is more in the discussion, random quotes/thoughts and chatty behaviour with my online and offline Twitter community. My Facebook and Hyves friends aren’t waiting for these incrowd little messages and would rather just know when I’m in the bar or having a shitty day at the office.
It happens to be that I probably share more interesting stuff on FriendFeed then over on Twitter. I mean, I do actually share interesting stuff on Twitter but that’s because FriendFeed puts it up their automatically. This way my FriendFeed timeline stays “clean” of the noise from Twitter and contains just interesting or funny stuff.
Previously, I would have enabled the Twitter <-> FriendFeed connection. That’s no more from this moment. I’ve decided to enable FriendFeed <-> Facebook synchronisation and will put non-noise status updates of how I’m doing on FriendFeed. Most FriendFeed users know how to hide those messages and are more power users anyway so they won’t care. These messages do get posted to Twitter so my Twitter followers will also know what I’m doing and my Facebook friends will get my personal status updates and the interesting stuff on Friendfeed.
Conclusion
Disabling the Twitter <-> FaceBook/your social network connection will reduce the techy and chatty from Twitter for your FaceBook friends. Enabling FaceBook <-> FriendFeed enables you to keep sharing interesting stuff from FriendFeed to Twitter and Facebook. And by adding a few personal status messages to FriendFeed each day. Both your FriendFeed and your Twitter friends will be notified of them.
