Twitter is our Id, Facebook is our Ego

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  • on May 19th, 2009

Roger cranked out a post with the same title after our lunch today .

There are MANY things wrong with Twitter, but I don’t care that much. I love what it has right.

I love that I can block people. I love that I am not pressured into following people. I love not looking through the pictures and the ‘wall’ drivel. I love not getting email notifications that make me log in. I love the discovery.

The biggest mistake that people make on Twitter is getting emails every time they get a new follower. Why does it matter? It should not. The gist of what I was chatting with Roger:

I was speaking with my good friend Howard Lindzon, my partner in several Twitter-related investments, about the differences in the way people communicate on Twitter and Facebook. Howard’s sense is that everybody lies on Facebook; that people represent a kind of “false self,” so that it is hard to really know what a person is like from their Facebook profile. He feels differently about Twitter, however, holding the belief that people’s tweets are a much closer representation of their true self than Facebook. So that someone who is a jerk on Twitter is likely a jerk in real life, and someone who is thoughtful and careful in their tweets is also like that offline. After considering Howard’s theory, I am convinced that he is right. Then it hit me. There is a framework for conceptualizing the differences in peoples’ communication between these two media: Freud’s structural model of the psyche. In short, Twitter is the id, while Facebook is the ego.

With Twitter, you get what you give. I believe it is the one place I can just give. I know that people care because when I do ask for something – place to eat, places to stay, antibiotics from a doctor with a loose pen…I get back insane love immediately.

Roger goes much deeper so head back over and read the rest of his post.

Love to hear your thoughts.

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