The Big Twitter Switch

I recently made the switch from Facebook to Twitter.  A lot of people really don't understand that difference or why anyone would prefer one over the over so I thought I'd give you some notes on my initial experience.   More after the jump.

For those of you emotionally invested in social media, you know it can be incredibly time consuming.  One of the worst things is having to explain yourself or clarify your statements, when you just wanted to get something out of your head or off your chest.  This is the #1 reason to switch from Facebook to Twitter.  I personally can take someones joke without knowing the background, having the person defend it and so on....I know it's a joke and that's what it is.

There's also really two good ways to use Twitter.  You could just have an ongoing conversation between you and your friends, or you could bring in all kinds of news sources, comedians, celebrities or whatever to stay on top of things.

In short, the best part of Twitter is there's no real space for debates.  On the other hand there's no space for videos or pics, instead you have to just link to them.

Then there's the whole 'hashtag' thing that confuses a lot of people.  All 'hashtags' are is way for you and other people searching for specific things to find them.  First a 'hashtag' is just putting the pound sign from your keyboard in front of a relevant word.  Here's an example.  If the host of Survivor says 'join the conversation with the hashtage #Survivor', then when you type #Survivor in the search box, you get those results instead of other instances of use of just the word 'survivor'.  This means if I guy says, "I lived through the hurricane, I'm a survivor" that won't come up in your results when you use the hashtag in front of the word.  Most importantly, you don't have to use hashtags at all and they are probably a little overused at this point.

Radio d.j.s are minor celebrities at best.  It means we usually have a few more 'friends' on social media, but what it really means is we are absolute magnets for people who want to debate issues or bring up their causes. This has become way to tiresome on me.  I very much appreciate that people care at all what I think, but I just can't spend a couple hours a night debating the issues or responding to nuttiness from the more insane people out there.  Twitter allows me to put my thoughts out there. It allows you to put your thoughts out there.  Best of all, both exist without us having to debate them.

You can follow me on Twitter @wesness

Here's more (it's a little dated, but most of it is good)