So as you may know, I’m something of a social network whore. I’m somewhat addicted to them, because they make it easy to have conversations (or snippets thereof) with many of my closest friends. However, the more I’ve used them, the more I noticed my habits have changed in their use, and I’ve developed a preference. Whereas once I used to be on Twitter most of the time, now I’m on Facebook much more often. Why is that? Well, I’ll tell you…

I’m focusing on Facebook and Twitter because, let’s face it, they’re the two big players. While Twitter is much more simplistic and easier to deal with, Facebook (at the cost of some privacy) has more features and, at times, more complications. However, I have found that it’s easier to have a conversation on Facebook than it is on Twitter, and also easier to keep up with what my friends are doing. Why? The main thing, I think, that makes Facebook easier to deal with is threaded conversations (yes, I know Plurk has this, but I’m not a fan of Plurk’s horizontal nature…yes, I’m weird…).

See, I’m blessed with lots of people on Twitter, people who I want to follow. However, since Twitter seems to move by at the speed of a rushing torrent, it makes it more difficult — for me, at least — to keep up with folks. Even the advent of lists only helped a little bit. Sure, they have mentions, which lets you see who replied to you and have a conversation that way, but this seems inelegant and a tad chaotic. By keeping things in threads, Facebook helps keep conversations much, much more organized.

Another issue I have with Twitter is the lack of notifications. To keep up with conversations, either yours or others, you have to constantly monitor the stream, which takes focus away from other things. Facebook does a much better job here with email alerts of replies and so on, making it easy to do other things then come back to the conversation when needed.

Maybe this is the crux of the matter here. With Facebook, I can pop in, check on people, leave messages, go do other things, come back and reply to those messages and so on. With Twitter, if one wants to be truly connected to folks, one has to constantly monitor it, unless you want to lose hours worth of tweets and conversations in the ether. I’d rather spend that energy elsewhere.

So, for me at least, I think Facebook is a much better conversational tool than Twitter, though I know folks who either prefer Twitter or use it exclusively…sadly, I don’t talk to them as much. What do you think about all of this? Am I way wrong? Why do you prefer one social network to another, or do you use both equally? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading.