I much prefer Twitter to Facebook, largely for the reason stated in a couple of recent blog articles I came across — From what I’ve experienced of Facebook, it’s mostly for communicating with people you already know. I find Twitter much more useful and interesting, because it helps me to meet so many new people. The first quote is from Aaron Lee‘s article What is Twitter all About…. to me?:

Everyone uses Twitter differently, and I can’t really tell you what it is about generally. However, I can tell you what Twitter is to me, personally. It is about connecting with people … It’s about building new relationships with people that you’re not able to do on other social networking sites, for example, when being on Facebook we tend to be inside our own circle of friends.

The second quote is from the Indian Chaaps blog — Why Twitter is better than Facebook:

Twitter is for whom you want to know – Facebook acts as a communicating media between us and the one whom we already know, whereas Twitter is a media between us and those whom we want to know.

I like the words that Aaron Lee emphasizes, later in the article quoted above, in describing the value of Twitter — Learning and Engaging. This catches the value of Twitter for me, as a professional tool. I’m constantly learning new things, from the many connections that I never would have made if it hadn’t been for Twitter.

Eric Rumsey is at: eric-rumseytemp AttSign uiowa dott edu and on Twitter @ericrumseytemp